Maybe This Explains It . . . .

I  hope it's a good morning for you. If you have someone who is or was a victim of the storms yesterday, please know, my heart goes out to you and them.  If you lost someone, I am so sorry.  I know, right now they're just words, but at least you know that someone is thinking about you, and I and my family are all thinking about you! 

I've had people who have used situations like yesterday, or some other news story to question me, "How can you believe in a God who would allow this to happen?"

The honest, no beating-around-the-bush answer?  I don't know.  I don't know how or why I do, I just know that I can't not believe.  I can not stop believing, it's just not in me.

And it is not a case of not having had bad things happen to me, because I have.  I was sexually abused by male family members, female babysitters, the babysitters' family members, and a couple of strangers when I was a child.  Then when I started dating, it carried over to some of those relationships.

Add to that I was bullied horribly in school because, well the best way to say it would be that because of the sexual abuse I was conditioned to be the perfect "victim".  I had absolutely no self-esteem.  That's what sexual abuse/rape teaches you, that you have no value and only the needs of the aggressor have any value.  It teaches you to see yourself as a thing to be used to gratify their needs, because your needs, your physical and sexual safety don't exist to them.

It also makes you desperate for someone to approve of you, to be kind to you without taking anything from you.  Basically, you become desperate for someone to do or say something that says/shows you that your feelings, and needs are valuable after all.

So, because of that, some people in school, and in your life, get cruel with you because you start smothering them simply because they were nice to you.  Others are cruel to you simply because they see your weakness and use it to make them feel powerful.  And still others are just plain evil.

"So, how can you believe in God???  How could He let that happen to you especially if you believe in Him???"

Because of two things, Free Will and Faith.

What do they have to do with it?  Well, let's start with Faith, you can be the most religious person on the planet, but that doesn't mean you exercise Faith.  And if you don't have someone in your life who can exercise and release their Faith, then Free Will gets in the way.

To have the kind of, and quality of, relationship with us that God wants, He had to make a big sacrifice . . . . the first one  . . . . Christ was actually His second sacrifice.  The first sacrifice, right from the beginning was to give us Free Will,  the freedom to choose to have a relationship with Him or go our own way.

And by giving us Free Will, He made the sacrifice of not being able to control everything, because if all of the people around us, even though they are extremely religious, don't know how to exercise and release their Faith then God can't work.  Because, if He's given us Free Will, then He can't force Himself into any situation.

It's that simple.  Think about it.  Pray on it, ask God to cause you to know the Truth and then just believe He will, no matter who you are or what you have done.  Because that's what exercising Faith is, just believing that it has nothing to do with who you are or anything about what you've done or not done, but instead, who He is.

Love you all!!

Stay Safe!!

Talk to you soon.