Is God Killing Us or Saving Us?
From Tim Keller’s Counterfeit Gods, p 20-21.
Sometimes God seems to be killing us when he’s actually saving us. Here he was turning Abraham into a great man – but on the outside it looked like God was being cruel. To follow God in such circumstances seems to some to be “blind faith,” but actually it is vigorous, grateful faith. The Bible is filled with stories of figures such as Joseph, Moses, and David in which God seemed to have abandoned them, but later it is revealed he was dealing with the destructive idols in their lives and that could only have come to pass through their experience of difficulty.
Like Abraham, Jesus struggled mightily with God’s call. In the garden of Gethsemane, he asked the Father if there was any other way, but in the end, he obediently walked up Mount Calvary to the cross. We can’t know all the reasons that our Father is allowing bad things to happen to us, but like Jesus did, we can trust him in those difficult times. As we look at him and rejoice in what he did for us, we will have the joy and hope necessary – and the freedom from counterfeit gods – to follow the call of God when times seem at their darkest and most difficult.