article - Why doesn’t God seem to help me when I most need Him?

http://www.remudaranch.com/Resources/news_detail.aspx?article=13369345

Why doesn’t God seem to help me when I most need Him?

By Rob Heinrich, MA, LPC

We all struggle at times with questions of why bad things happen, seemingly arbitrarily. And just as arbitrary is God’s response, or so it seems. Through the years many answers have been discussed, many of which are at least partially helpful. These include the reality of love and freewill. Without freewill, love would not exist. If we were puppets with no choice but to “love”, love would be meaningless. With the capacity to love also comes the capacity to do great evil, which is why there are so many atrocities in the world. God has granted us free-will which means we have the capacity, for now, to violate His law of love by harming others.

Natural disasters can also, at least partially, be explained by the reality of free-will. We live in a broken, fallen world where things don’t always go as they should. This all makes sense to some extent, and yet I also have seen evidence of God’s supernatural intervention. Sometimes God rescues us from greater evil, other times He seems to allow bad things to happen. So why doesn’t God intervene so that atrocities never happen?

The answer, I believe, has much to do with eternal issues. God is concerned with our temporal needs in this world, but only He can see the big picture. The Apostle Paul writes that all things work together for the good for those who love Christ Jesus (Romans 8:28). He doesn’t say that all of the things we experience or go through are good, but when all is said and done, God molds everything, the good and the bad, into something that ultimately works out for our good. Faith is the belief that God knows what is best and that He wants what is best for us, even when everything around us causes us to doubt.

Ephesians 6:12 maintains that our core battle is not with what we can see, but with the unseen and often hard to understand spiritual aspects of our existence. Greg Boyd uses an example from World War 2 as a means of making a parallel with our spiritual struggles.. He points out that war has casualties, and decisions have to be made in light of the overall battle. He goes on to paint a picture of a General of the allied forces who has a daughter and son-in-law living in a cottage on Normandy Beach at the time of the great invasion. The general was able to get word to his daughter that she and her husband needed to stay put until after the battle was over. However, he gave them a means of communicating by radio and tells them to let him know when they have needs and he will respond. When they run out of something or need medical supplies, they let him know and he was always there with supplies. One day their calls for supplies go unheeded. They have injuries and are running out of food. They desperately call out over and over on the radio, but there is no response.

Questions started to form about whether their father was listening. Was he still alive? Did he not care? Was he simply too busy? He eventually responded but not until they had endured serious suffering. Only after the war was over was he able to explain that if he had responded to their frantic calls, he would have given their position away. His response at that particular time would have drawn enemy gun fire, and certainly would have put them in greater danger. He was completely aware of their need, was heartbroken over their plight, but he was completely invested in what was in his beloved children’s best interest. So it is with God who constantly has our eternal best interest in mind and won’t intervene if, in fact, His intervention will cause a greater or eternal devastation that only He can see and anticipate.

John Elderedge says it this way: “The story of your life is the long and brutal assault on your soul by the one who knows what you could be and fears it.” A friend of ours had a great response to this quote that tells the flip side of the story: “The story of your life is the long and patient wooing of your heart by the One who knows what you could be and desperately desires it.”