If I have heard it once I have heard it a dozen times through the years. Well meaning loving people not knowing what to say regarding my leukemia say something like, “God must know that you needed this or He is testing you.”
Please stop!! As well-meaning as people are they are defaming our heavenly Father. Jesus is very clear about this. Luke 11, “If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him?”
Satan must smugly chuckle each time we say something like this regarding bad things that happen to us. Have I asked for healing? Of course I have. Does God answer by fostering the disease? If so, He is an imposter who has been totally misrepresented by Jesus. I don’t think so.
My boys were born in Uganda where we had to teach them to beware of snakes. Perhaps we over-taught because one son especially dislikes them. When we moved to Georgia one afternoon we found a very large eastern diamondback. When I brought it into the house it would have been reprehensible and despicable of me to put it in his face. Jesus has made this as plain as can be. God does not serve up snakes and scorpions. We live in a world where bad things happen. They do not come from our heavenly Father.
Written by Roger Bothwell on July 9, 2013
PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574
rogerbothwell.org