Father, teach us who You are. For when we understand You further, we are more able to enjoy Your presence. Allow us to remember and know that Your words do not come from feelings, but from careful and concise study of Your word. Hearing Your voice will not always be easy because You speak when You choose to speak, not when we want You to speak. May we learn to accept this as true. We love You Father, but circumstances show that You love us more, and we thank You so much for that great love. In Jesus name, Amen.
Is God unchanging? We are told yes by theologians and pastors, but aren't there some confusing underlying implications to that premise? For example, does God change his mind after we pray? Let me narrow this question down a little bit; does God break promises? If God says yes to one person, and another person asks for the opposite thing to happen, will he have to say no to the second person? Let me again narrow this question down; does God break a promise so that he can punish evil? I've brought up several thought provoking questions in this introduction that I hope you will think on, but the question I want to focus on is the last.
Does God break a promise so that he can punish evil? Think of it this way, when God promised the Israelites that they would enter the promised land, did they ever fall away? Yes. Were the punished by God? Yes. Did God break his promise to them? No. God punished and fulfilled his promise to them. Surely though, God held back true punishment from his people. Yes, they suffered in the dessert for forty years, but they still entered the promised land. God would have had every right to take that promise from them too because of how they had disobeyed him, but he didn't.
"And Jehoram walked in the way of the kings of Israel, as the house of Ahab had done, for the daughter of Ahab was his wife. And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord. Yet the Lord was not willing to destroy the house of David, because of the covenant that he had made with David, and since he had promised to give a lamp to him and to his sons forever." - 2 Chronicles 21:6-7
Here we have a man who was evil in the sight of God, but God partly restrained his wrath because he had made a promise. Later in the chapter, we see Jehoram being punished, but not to the extant that he deserved. For he deserved for his kingdom to be wiped out, but his kingdom was meant to be a means by which God would fulfill the promise to his son David.
The point is that God has always been gracious to us, he has withheld his wrath from us by way of his son. Why does he not wipe the evil out from the world though? Why has it not disintegrated under the hand of God? I'm not talking about the people who have accepted Jesus and still struggle with sin, I'm talking about those who are completely and utterly evil and feel no remorse for their evil. The answer to this question is found in Romans 9:
"What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory." - Romans 9:22-23
God has endured these evil people so that we, his children, can see his glory even more. You will say "how does that makes sense mike? How do I see God's glory more when there is evil?" If you walk into a dark room and you turn on the light, are you not more thankful for the light? If you walked into a cave without a flashlight, would you not crave light and search for it? If you walk into a dark world, when you see the light, will it not be so much more glorious? Do you understand my brothers and sisters, that God has endured the evils of this world in order that we may see how much better he is and how much more he has to offer.
God is good when there is evil, God is good when there is good. God has planned for both of them because in the end, it all leads to something beautiful. We may not like a particular color in the painting, but when applied in the right spot of the painting, it may make it look more beautiful than it was; suffering is the same. Though at first glance, it doesn't seem glorious, we cannot compare "the suffering of this present age to the joy that is coming".
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