No Such Thing As A "God-Failure"

When you experience a problem in your life, remember, it’s not a result of “bad luck.” There’s no such thing as bad luck. God regulates the good things and the bad things that come into your life. Sometimes, God allows a problem to interrupt your peaceful day. When that happens, it doesn’t mean that God has failed. It means that he has a plan.

Sometimes his plans are beyond our understanding, as we talked about last week in the book of Job. Sometimes God’s plan is to discipline us, as we see here with the people of Israel. Sometimes we don’t know what God’s plans are until much later in our lives, when we can look back.

A couple years ago, I read a book entitled, “Why bad things happen to good people.” It was written by a Jewish rabbi. His conclusion was that the reason bad things happen to good people, is because God is not all-powerful. He doesn’t have control over everything our world. When a bad thing happens, God just couldn’t help it, but he will help you get through it.

I hope you don’t believe that. That’s definitely not what we learn here in the Book of Lamentations. Here we learn that God is in control of everything in our world. Sometimes he shields of from problems, and sometimes, he doesn’t. Either way, his compassions never fail. They are new every morning. God is faithful to you. Look at verse 31: “For men are not cast off by the Lord forever. Though he brings grief, he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love. For he does not willingly bring affliction or grief to the children of men.”

Men are not cast off by the Lord forever. That’s ultimately what happened to Israel. They weren’t cast off forever. Many years later, the survivors returned to Israel, and rebuilt the city, and eventually the Messiah was born right there in Bethlehem, just as God had promised. God never fails.

And when that Messiah, Jesus Christ, hung from the cross, it looked as though God had failed. It looked as though God had stopped blessing, God had stopped caring, God had stopped protecting. It looked as though God wouldn’t keep his promises after all. But God never fails. On Easter morning, as you well know, Jesus rose from the dead. God had not failed. That gruesome death on the cross was God’s mysterious way of taking away our sins. That was God’s way of cleansing your soul, making it possible for you and your loved ones to be forgiven, and to have the hope of eternal life.

I pray that these passages from this mysterious book of the Bible will fill you with an attitude of patient hope. You se that attitude in verse 24: “I say to myself, ‘The Lord is my portion; there I will wait for him.’ The Lord is good to those whose hope is in him, to the one who seeks him; it is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.”

I have waited for things that just never came, and I’m sure you have too. Maybe you come to church, and you’re waiting for a friend that you invited to join you, but that friend never comes. Maybe you’re waiting for a card or a letter to come to you in the mail, but it never comes. When I used to travel in foreign countries, we would wait for buses and taxis, but sometimes, they would never come.