by: Mark Lenentine
Life has many good questions…
Why is the sky blue?
What is the meaning of life?
How can I understand girls? (Don’t bother with this question. It has no right answer!)
Some questions are just annoying – How much longer until we get there?
And some questions are life changing – Will you marry me?
No matter how old or young you are, you have learned by experience that life is made up of questions. This is, in fact, true even with the first man and woman ever created. God created mankind towards the end of Genesis chapter 1, and by chapter 3, we have the first recorded question in the Bible.
Wow, that didn’t take long!
Genesis 3:1, “Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?”
Eve comes face-to-face with a question that changed the course of mankind. Although this question is worded many different ways, the question that Eve faced and we face almost on a daily basis is this – IS GOD GOOD?
When you read the story, you will see Satan laying out a plausible story of a “big, mean God” who was somehow trying to keep her from something she really wanted.
Hey, Eve, what is God trying to hide from you?
Do you really think that God has YOUR best in mind?
Eve isn’t the only one. Think about the questions that must have been running through Job’s mind when God allowed Satan to take EVERYTHING he had in just a moment. Probably the same questions David faced when God took his newborn baby. Can you imagine the sickening feeling Gideon had when he and only 300 men, meagerly armed with trumpets and pitchers, walked up to the camp of the most powerful military on Earth?
Is God really good?
Does He really have my best in mind?
Can He really take care of me?
Perhaps you have faced the same question in one form or another. Maybe you too have stumbled into an unfortunate and despairing season of life and pondered this plaguing uncertainty. Whether you have been there before or you are there now, I would encourage you to face this question with a few other questions:
Who is putting this doubt in your heart?
- Remember, it was the Devil himself who posed this question first in history. God is never the Author of doubt.
Has God ever let you down before?
- We are often by human nature very distrusting, but give God the benefit of the doubt because He has never failed before!
What good has God done for you in the past?
- Sometimes the quickest skill we learn as Christians is the incredible ability to so quickly forget God’s blessings of yesterday. The children of Israel were witnesses of a miracle by the hand of God one day and then complainers and doubters the next.
I would encourage you to constantly remember how God has been good to you, for the day will come when God’s goodness will be questioned. In that day, wouldn’t it be great to have the right answer!
Mark Lenentine
Youth Pastor
Gospel Light Baptist Church
Rio Rancho, NM