Can God Be Trusted?

I had an interesting experience today with two friends; both are older than me and both are battling severe sickness. 
Together, they illustrate the extreme emotions on suffering.
One, whom I've grown to love over the years, lies in a rehab facility - trying to recover from surgery. He continues to lose weight and have problems eating.
Today I learned he has lost another 12 pounds and is getting dangerously close to double digits on the scale. He is weak. He is tired. He is fighting to return home.
Although he expressed a disappointment with God in His situation, we prayed together for strength and recovery.

The second was much more hopeful - a woman who received excellent news. She has struggled with cancer and with tumors. 
Today we received news that the PET scans were good; the outlook hopeful and therefore, the praises solid to the Lord for what He has done.
With her - we rejoice together, not only now but also in the days to come; for if the tumors return, we are steadfast in our faith in the Lord's hand with this matter.

Now - these are two situations that are strikingly similar, but also very different. 
How can you explain why a person should place their faith in Almighty God when it seems there is no rhyme or reason as to who He heals and who He allows to suffer?
Is God capricious?
Does God love one more than the other?
How does God receive Glory from these situations and how are we to understand it?

These are not easy questions to answer.
But I believe I can boil it down to one question with one answer - Can We Trust God?

As Christians, we often pray to God that if God will descend or do something extraordinary when we are sick, when we need assurance, or when we are in trouble that we will believe and follow without question.
If I contract a disease and God certainly heals me, then we think we will follow God as a puppy dog follows his master.
Yet, when we turn to the Bible, history proves otherwise.

When we examine Israel, they had everything provided by God while in the wilderness - riches given by Egypt, food in the morning and evening, water from rocks, leadership by Moses, the will of God revealed by a cloud and the presence of God revealed in the Tabernacle.
But the first time Moses goes up to the mountain for an extended period of time - they gather around a gold calf and worship it as if it were God.
Throughout Israel's history, the more God attempted to draw near, the more they seemed to push Him away.

Later, when Solomon was king, Israel as well as the king had everything they could want.
David had brought peace to the land, expanded the borders and gathered materials for the Temple.
Solomon inherited it all - building the Temple while also acquiring unfathomable wisdom and a ridiculous number of wives.
Yet, but the end of Solomon's reign, Israel looked like the Egypt they had left years before; slave labor and idolatry permeated throughout the land.
From David to Solomon, less than a generation, Israel had descended and fallen away. To be sure, they enjoyed the gifts, but forget less and less about the Gracious Giver.
And many times we will do the same - rejoicing in the gifts and blessings of God while soon discarding the One who has blessed us.

At the situation in the land, as the Kingdom became divided, the people wondered about trusting God.
The prophets then rose in Israel, for the Kings who were to lead the nation in His will, with a few exceptions, became increasingly wicked.

The prophets spoke and in their words we can read what can be described as nothing less than sheer disappointment with God.
They, like all the people, had been raised on the victory stories of God reaching its zenith in the Temple, but now the People of God were being carted off to Babylon.
To them it was as confusing as a solid Christian having cancer and slowly wasting away in pain as they await death. 
It seems to make no sense as we struggle with our heavenly trust issues with the Lord.

Yet, like in modern times, back then the Lord did speak to His people - He spoke to and the through the Prophets.
As we read in the Old Testament, we see God challenging wickedness on Mount Carmel with a flash of Divine Power and we hold instances like this in our minds to be more important and convincing than a depressing sermon from Jeremiah.
But the truth is, those Divine Power Displays did very little to nurture long term faithfulness of the people.

As the people questioned God's honor in the sense of His concern for them, God continued to speak.
The ironic thing of the situation was that God would point to the people questioning His concern as evidence of His concern.
And the reality of it was that if God didn't care, He wouldn't have listened at all.
Therefore, we can conclude since God loves us and cares for us today - He does indeed hear our cries of anguish and our prayers filled with pain.

The prophets of old teach us one more thing.
In their writings, they are not concerned with intellectual questions about the suffering of the people in relationship to the love of God.
Instead, they are far more interested in God's passion towards His people.
Whether it was the Kingdom in a Civil War after Solomon died or the final kings being drug off to a foreign land - the people struggled with hearing the promises of God in victory while seeing their defeat and reduction at the hands of wicked, pagan men.

Again, the issue for us in sickness and trials is the same as the ancients had in their lives - Can God be Trusted? 
The answer is both 'Yes' and 'No.'

God can be trusted to respond as God and according to His attributes; but God can not be trusted to respond to situations and sickness in our lives as we think He ought to respond.

If we look to Jonah, the crux of his complaint and faithlessness was that he did not trust God enough to be harsh on the hated people of Nineveh. 
He did not trust God to do what he wanted Him to do, which was destroy Nineveh and its people. 
Jonah knew, as God has prove countless time, that He is a merciful Lord when people repent of their sins; which is exactly what happened in Jonah's case.
Nineveh was spared and Jonah was right - God acted like God; He did not act like Jonah wanted Him to act.

Another example of how God views humans and His love toward them can be seen in how we act with our own children; especially when it comes to new parents.
A new parent will spend hundreds of dollars on video equipment to record a child babbling and the child rolling over, crawling and then walking.

Even though nearly 5 billion people on earth have already accomplished the feat of talking and walking, new parents take pride and joy in these first acts of the new child.
God desires that type of relationship with us; a return to a relationship of child-like love and trust, similar to the trust a new child has in his parents through each of those cautious steps of learning early in life.

The Prophet Hosea demonstrated in a visible way God's treatment and love toward His people.
Hosea's life could double as a Soap Opera or the characters could have been found on a daytime TV talk show.
Hosea had the ominous task of demonstrating to the people how God felt towards them.
Therefore, Hosea was commanded to marry a prostitute. When his wife betrayed him, he offered to whisk her away to the wilderness to heal and be restored.
There was no condemnation, although there was disappointment; yet, healing and restoration was offered in love and mercy.
And this is what God offers to us.

You see, the Prophets do not end in universal, final defeat for the people of God. 
Instead, the prophets speak of a final joy.
They speak of an impending hope.
At the beginning of God's Word we see Eden, a Paradise. At the end, we read of a New Heaven, also a Paradise. Everything else is human history and means we are in a time of transition.
But excluding those two time periods, we live in that transition - so, what about now?
Can God be trusted NOW?

The unequivocal answer is 'Absolutely.' 
God can indeed be trusted with our hearts, souls and lives.
But remember - God cannot be trusted to do what we think He ought to do; that's not trusting God, that is an expectation of God conforming to what we desire.
I can tell you from experience - that isn't going to happen and you really don't want that to happen.
However, God can be trusted to respond to our problems, our issues, our illnesses and our crisis as God in His holiness and all other attributes.

But before you can trust God in all of who He is with all of your situations in life, you must first trust Him with your soul in forgiveness and mercy.
You can make that happen by receiving Christ as Lord.

Until next time, go win one for the good guys.