The View from Baltic Drive

Again, taken from my crosswalk.com daily devotional. This is a great thing to have emailed to you. Some of them might not seem "encouraging" but sometimes I have to say "I don't understand why you are allowing this God, but I still trust in you." I am trying to teach my girls to pray, yet not be discouraged when they don't get the miraculous answers they want. We recently prayed daily together for a little boy who was critically ill. A serious illness that by the world's standards should have been curable with an operation and chemo ended up taking his life in a matter of a few months. Things went from bad to worse. And now, my girls hear my prayers for restoration, and they pray sincere prayers themselves for their family. It is important that they learn that God is good, even when we aren't getting exactly what we want. That it is a mystery, and God's ways are not our ways. I feel that I must impress this upon them early, so they won't be angry with God when things don't go their way. I also need the reminder myself. So, here it is, from Crosswalk.com

Messed Up Theology
References:-->Job 13:1--15"Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him ..." (v. 15)

A friend of mine who is an instructor in the field of Christian counseling says that one of the things he likes to do with his students is to mess up their theology. He does so by asking them difficult questions about the realities of the universe in order to see how they attempt to square these issues with their view of God.
"God always answers the prayer of faith," said one of his students. "Then why," he asked the student, "did I pray for an hour for my father who was desperately sick to have a good night and then hear that he had the worst night since he had been in the hospital?" "You didn't pray in faith," replied the student.
That's the kind of glib answer many people would give to that question. Such people can't sit quietly in the presence of mystery and say: "I don't understand why this is so but nevertheless I still believe God is good." They must have some kind of answer that they can hold on to because when they have no answers they have no faith. Faith is Job saying: "Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him." Anyone can believe when there are explanations and answers. The person who goes on to know God in a deep and intimate way is the one who can affirm that God is good even though there may be a thousand appearances to the contrary. Pray for me and I will pray for you that together we might come to the place of trusting God even when we cannot trace Him.
Prayer:
O God, bring us closer day by day to that place of deep confidence and absolute trust. May we know You so deeply that nothing we see around us will shake or shatter our belief in Your unchanging goodness. In our Lord's Name we pray. Amen.