At the beginning of the race I never thought about my testimony until I started hearing others. Even at training camp I didn’t share mine, but thankfully not to many people did. It wasn’t until month 3 that my team shared testimonies.It was at that moment in time where I thought “ok God, let’s put this together” and I really thought about what my testimony was. There has been several conversations and instances that has motivated me to write this blog. I will also add that I’m not too thrilled about it. There’s not too many people that even know this about me so here it goes.
So many people ask the question “How can there be a God when there’s so many bad things that happen in the world?” And I use to be one of them. You see, back in 2013 two of my highschool friends died, one of which was murdered. And another one of my friends died as well the same year from a freak accident. Dang that sucked, I rememeber being so mad at God, I remember times where I cussed at God being so frustrated and annoyed. But I never really told anyone how mad I was, instead I chose to hide it and pretend I was fine. Which in the long run made it worse because I never got out my frustration, only in the times I was alone. It was almost a year, give or take a few months, where being pissed off at God went on and on. It turned out that I gave God an ultimatum of “if you don’t turn up now, then I’m done with this.” And wouldn’t you know it, He showed up and proved me wrong, and that’s another blog in itself!
Why is there suffering? Why does God allow evil? Why doesn’t God end all suffering? All very valid and good questions! Now I’m no professional at this and I didn’t go to school for it but I’m going to try my best to answer these just from my knowledge. God is not the cause of suffering; He loves too much to create it. If you look at James 1:13 it says Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted by evil, and He himself tempts no one. We can all say that since God made everything, He made evil too right? Wrong. Suffering in the world is a result of us human beings turning away from God, most of our relationships with God has come out wrong or just bad in general.
If we look back in the beginning when God created the world it was good. The original two humans turned away from the Lord and started doing what pleased them and not Him. And because of God, because of his love, did something about the suffering in this world. He has sent Jesus to die for us, He sent His son to suffer for us. Jesus was God’s one and ONLY son, He was perfect and yet he took punishment for us by suffering and dying a death that was harsh, brutal and unnecessary. If someone tells you that they love you, those words mean something because they are freely given from the heart. But if you learned that someone had told you that they loved you and knew that they had been forced to do it, their words would not mean too much. Forcing anything upon people always turns down the wrong street anyways. If you wanted to create a loving world, you must also create a world in which choices can be exercised. Free will. And in creating said world, there is also the possibility of choosing evil.
At the same time we ask this question of can we trust God with so much tragedy, I also, in which most people reply no. Are you with Him in good times as well? Or do you just go to Him when times are bad? Do you hangout with your best friend ONLY during the bad times, or do you hangout with them during good times as well? It tells us in James 2:23 God is your Father but He desires friendship with you also. Friends you go through the good and bad. It’s easy to blame someone when you only see them during the bad times, but when you see them during the good AND bad it’s much harder to blame them and much easier to come to them for comfort. And that’s what God wants. He wants us to have free will, He wants to love us, He wants us to love Him, He wants to be our friends, He doesn’t want us to suffer though.
