God Must Be Punishing Me - additonal thoughts

As we sang the final song yesterday morning in church, I looked and noticed a few sad faces. As I reflected, I realized that they are the ones dealing with very difficult circumstances- whether it is broken relationships, financial hardships, etc. Then when I thought about my message that day, I realized that there wasn’t much “good news.” You know, I really try to balance every message with good news and bad news. The Bible is full of both challenge and comfort, conviction and compassion. I wonder if I didn’t explain things very well.

If you are going through a difficult time, it does not mean that God sent that difficulty to you. There is a difference between God sending and God allowing difficult times. If you lose your job, it is not necessarily because God prompted your boss to fire you. However, God may have allowed your boss to exercise his freedom to fire you. Just because God didn’t stop him doesn’t mean that God told him to do it. And this is the essential issue when people say, “God must be punishing me.” They assume that God sent this bad thing into your life. But remember, just because something bad has happened to you does not mean that God sent it. This includes the “discipline” that I talked about. God may not have sent this bad thing to discipline you or teach you a lesson. However, since you are experiencing it, he will use it to help you grow into greater maturity.

That leads me to the second thing to add to my message. Sometimes the consequences we deal with- natural, relational, and even legal, are the results of other’s actions. If someone else throws a rock at you, you are the victim of natural consequences of the laws of inertia and momentum.

Finally- when someone says, “God must be punishing me,” they often look for what they did wrong to deserve it. If God did not send the punishment or discipline, then you may not have done anything wrong. But don’t let yourself off the hood too easily. In every relationship, in every decision, there are things we could have done better- so there is always something to learn and somewhere to improve.

In the end, I would encourage anyone facing a difficult situation to put more energy into figuring out the “what” question, and less energy into figuring out the “why.” Ask yourself, “What should I do now? What can I learn from this? What can I do differently next time?” Don’t spin your wheels for very long by asking, “why did this happen.” Just wait until you get to heaven, and then you will have lots of time for him to explain why.