1. MAKING SENSE OF GOD’S WILL
WHY?
MAKING SENSE OF GOD’S WILL
This study may not resolve this issue, but hopefully it will help you as you seek to answer these questions for yourself.
Each of us needs to be able to respond and justify our response when non-believers ask us why we think God exists in light of all the suffering in the world.

2. Typically, we make assumptions about how God is supposed to work in our world. When God fails to meet those expectations, we may get disappointed, disillusioned or confused.

3. One assumption from the author is that if I believe in God and try to be a good person then God will take care of me, bless me, and nothing bad will happen to me.
The author calls this a commonly held but misguided assumption.

4. Do you believe that everything happens for a reason?
What does “everything happens for a reason” mean?

5. The author says it usually means that God has a plan and although we cannot see that plan, the suffering we are going though now has a purpose and God has a reason for it, so we just need to trust God.
The author considers this a second commonly held, but misguided assumption.

6. If everything happens for a reason then we are saying it is part of God’s plan. This means God planned this tragedy for your life and willed this thing to happen which means God caused it to happen.
Is this what you mean when you say everything happens for a reason? If not, what do you mean?

7. The author considers this that everything happens for a reason a second commonly held, but misguided assumption.
Think of the very worst thing that has happened in your life. Do you believe that God caused it to happen?

8. Belief that everything happens for a reason is one of the reasons people will tell you that some tragic event in your life was God’s will.
If someone murders another person, and God wished for it to happen then God is responsible for putting this into the mind of the murderer.
Is this an all-loving God?

9. If a baby dies, is this part of God’s plan.
Does God really want to take babies away from the mothers and fathers?
30,000 people a day die from diseases related to malnutrition, starvation, and a lack of proper drinking water.
Is this God’s will?

10. If it is God’s plan for 30,000 people a day to die, then there is no need for us to help. If it is God’s will that we become sick, then why go to a doctor. That would mean the doctor is going against God’s will to heal us.
If we say that everything happens for a reason or this bad thing is just the will of God, then we are left with the impression that God wills evil and suffering in the world.

11. This type of thinking could easily cause people to turn away from God.
Now we will begin to try and make sense of the relationship between God and suffering

12. Read Luke 16:19-26
What did the rich man do to deserve being placed in a place of torment? And what did Lazarus do to be placed in a place of bliss?
He ignored Lazarus, not a sin of commission but a sin of omission.
Is this fair? How many people have you ignored?