Your Plan vs. God’s Plan
I was asked to do a follow up on the precious article I wrote for the August 2019 edition of the compass. The illustration that was supposed to be included with the first article wasn’t included so I’m having it displayed here to give you a summary of what the previous article was about. If you haven’t read that article, please do so as this will be more applicable if you do.
Here is the link: http://www.englishcompass.org/articles/trials_and_tribulations
The basic summary of the article was that even though people want things in life to go smooth and easy, it is actually through the trials and tribulations that God builds our faith and character and the so the challenge is to embrace the difficulties and not try to run from and avoid them and have patience, while clinging to God, to allow Him to work in us the fruits of righteousness.
The question that has come up from the previous article is whether God is the one that sends the trials and tribulations our way, in order to help us grow. The short answer is “no.” But it’s a bit more complex than that.
I reference you to the book of Job in the bible. Job was a righteous person and was experiencing a lot of blessings in his life. Satan challenged the reason why Job was so faithful and righteous; he attested that it was only because of the blessings of God and for no other reason. God, in order to show that Job was righteous for righteousness sake and not for worldly and material gain, allowed Satan to do things to Job, short of killing him.
From this story, we can deduce some things. First, God is not the one who sends trials and tribulations our way. People have free will and this planet has been contaminated with darkness and wickedness, and I think it’s safe to say that humans are responsible for most, if not all, of the horrible and difficult things that happen in this world. And it would be fair to say that Satan is behind all of this; he was the one that tempted Adam and Eve to fall from grace and initiated the entrance of darkness into this world.
Secondly, we can also deduce that even though God is not the one who sends the trials and tribulations, ultimately, He is the one who has to allow it. But one day, He will have to demonstrate His righteousness in His dealings with every human being on Earth. This is the only way that the Great Controversy will end and God can win back the trust of the universe.
So with this in mind, we can be assured that God is in control of everything and nothing in this universe happens without Him allowing it. But this does not mean that He sends difficulties our way or that He takes pleasure in it. He allows it for many reasons, one of which is to help us develop our trust and faith in Him and to build our character.
Paul tells us in Romans 8:28 that God causes all things to work together for good to those that love God. We can cling to this promise in our times of trials and tribulations and many times, we can see God’s hand at work in hindsight. And for the occasions where we don’t, we can have faith that one day, we will. The key is to learn to trust in the goodness of God and not in ourselves, nor our circumstances.
Jimmy Kim was the youth pastor at Atlanta Korean SDA Church from 2001-2011 and is currently the youth pastor at Marietta Korean SDA church since 2011. He is serving as Chair of Administration for the East Coast Korean Campmeeting English Division since 2011 and his passion is youth ministry. He is also a licensed chiropractor and is the owner/general manager of a real estate investment company.