Believing in vs. following God

Hmm. Where to start.

I have been thinking about my friends that "believe in God". I put this is quotation marks because it's really more like a cliche to me these days. You believe in God? That's great! You're halfway to Heaven already!

So what's the issue? Why aren't you actively seeking His face everyday? Maybe you want to, but let me guess...you aren't sure. I think you are sure, but you know that actively following God would require a major life overhaul. Hey, I've been there. We may have even partied together. I know about all that. And let me say I don't miss it. I miss you as a person, but I don't miss the drugs, booze, and the general feeling of disgust with myself the morning after.

Let me add before I go on that God sees all of this, and loves you anyway. No matter what you've done. I do mean NO MATTER WHAT.

There is a line in one of the Anne of Green Gables movies (that everyone needs to watch! SO heartwarming! :D) where Marilla says, "God does not want you for a fairweather friend."

Well, that seems harsh! But before you go run off, choosing only to hear "God does not want you", let me explain. God does want you. But He wants ALL of you. He is even jealous for your attention to other junk. There are several places in the Bible where this is touched on, and here is a good one; Exodus 34:14:

14 You must worship no other gods, for the Lord, whose very name is Jealous, is a God who is jealous about his relationship with you.

He wants you when things are good and bad. He doesn't just want you when you need Him, but when you think you don't need Him. WHO wants a friend to hang around only when things are peachy? No one. That's how you know who you're real friends are, and we all know that. Jesus is the realest friend you've got.

He's not going to be angry or annoyed with you if yall haven't spoken in a while. We may think that because we often forget that Jesus doesn't think like we do. He is ALWAYS happy to hear from you.

1 Kings 18:21 says:
21 Then Elijah stood in front of them and said, “How much longer will you waver, hobbling between two opinions? If the Lord is God, follow him! But if Baal is God, then follow him!” But the people were completely silent.

Uh oh. Feeling a little uncomfortable? Good. It's because you believe in God. If the Lord is God, follow Him!

Now come the excuses. I'll address one that I've come across countless times, and struggled with for years myself.

If God is so good, why do bad things happen? Or why does He allow them to happen?

The best answer I can give for this is an analogy, and I do love analogies.

I worked at Taco Mac for about 3 1/2 years as a server, and every year, we would sell these stupid paper fish that kids would color on or people would write things on. The proceeds would go to saving the Chattahoochee river. Great cause, I know, but I couldn't stand those fish. They were obnoxious, because they were all over the place. So one of the years I was there, my GM was putting them up on the wall and there was a bunch of them clustered together near the ceiling and then a line of them coming down the wall to make a half "U" shape. And we all said Rob (that was his name, obviously), WHAT are you doing with these fish? To which he replied, just wait, it's gonna be cool when I'm done. So for the next few days we watched as he would put fish here and there and it just looked ridiculous for a while. However, one day I came into work after being off for a couple days, and the whole thing was finished. He made this HUGE pirate ship that took up the entire wall on the side of the restaurant. It was awesome. And all the little messages and pictures that people had drawn on the little fish made it that much cooler.

So my answer to the question is that I don't know why God allows bad things to happen. Yes, He does allow them to happen sometimes, but does He cause them to happen? No. God is good, all the time. But the point is that if we are FOLLOWING God, we trust that He sees the bigger picture, as stupid, or ugly, or ridiculous it may seem. Because at the end, when He shows it to us, we can't even begin to fathom how awesome it's gonna be.

Personally, I could go on and on about the bad crap that's happened to me. One of the most devastating was losing my father my senior year of high school, right after I turned 18. And let me tell you I was definitely a daddy's girl. I was his only daughter, and he had three sons. So not only is there all this terrible crap going on in the world, but in my personal experience...I can't even describe the magnitude of how awful that feeling is.

But I can tell you that I trust God. No, I don't know what His reason was for allowing my daddy to leave us. And I was VERY angry with Him for a LONG time because of it, but thank God, that's ok. He can handle whatever beef it is you have with Him, even if it's misdirected. I am now thankful that I was so incredibly blessed with the most amazing father ever for 18 years, who taught me a lot about what a real man looks like. And I do miss him. But at the end of the day, God knows better than I do about everything.

I can't see the big picture, but if we are not just believing in God but following Him, seeking Him, there will come a day when He shares it with us.