An Answer
by Dotty Cockcroft
How many times have you been asked by unbelievers, “How can there be a good God when bad things happen?” It is not all that easy to explain that bad things are usually caused by man’s sin.
In my reading through the bible I have just started on Proverbs. Actually, I skipped it on the way through, not being quite sure how to go about it. Some parts seem to need to be read a verse at a time, and I thought it might take ages.
Anyway, the first chapter explains why Proverbs was written, to help people gain wisdom and understanding. Verse 7 tells us: ‘Fear of the LORD is the foundation of true knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline’. So, if we turn our backs on God and try to go our own way we will, as verse 31 says, harvest the bitter fruit of living our own way.
Once we take the risk of believing that Father God has good plans to prosper us and not harm us (Jeremiah 29:11), that He made a covenant for us in which He promises to love us and forgive us no matter what we do or have done, and we sign up to it by accepting Jesus as Lord in our lives, then we can start to walk in the fear of the Lord and wisdom and know God’s love and protection over us. We will be listening to Him ‘who has become for us wisdom from God’ (1 Corinthians 1:30).
Prayer: Lord we don’t want to eat the bitter fruit of living our own way and choking on our own schemes. We thank You, Father, for Jesus who is our wisdom from You and we ask that we may walk close to Him daily and hear His voice showing us how to live. We ask too that next time someone challenges us about the existence of a good God that You will show us how to answer them and help them enter into Your blessing. Amen.
Dotty Cockcroft is on the associate ministry and teaching teams at Glyndley Manor where she has been involved for about 20 years. She is married with 3 grown up children and 3 gorgeous grandchildren and works as a Practice Nurse. She passionately believes God wants us to move into His healing and wholeness.
Please feel free to use this devotional to send on to your friends or share with your church fellowship. Provided full acknowledgement is made to Seeds of the Kingdom as the source, you are also welcome to use it in a non-commercial way and reproduce it in magazines or other Christian websites. The copyright for any commercial use of the material remains with Ellel Ministries International.
