WHEN GOD DOESN’T MAKE SENSE
When life does not make sense and God seems silent, faith trusts His wisdom, rests in His grace, and surrenders to His will.
The true test of your faith is when you don’t understand what God is doing, but you trust Him anyway.
Anyone can trust God when life is going well. It is easy to praise Him when prayers are answered, problems are solved, and everything seems to be moving in the right direction. The real test of faith comes when life takes a turn you never expected. It comes when the diagnosis is serious, the door closes, the burden remains, and God seems silent.
At those moments, faith is no longer something we talk about. It becomes something we live.
Proverbs 3:5–6 says, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart And do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He will make your paths straight.”
Most of us do well with the first part until our understanding runs out. We want God to explain Himself. We want to know why He allowed the hardship, why the prayer was not answered the way we hoped, or why the struggle continues. Yet Scripture does not tell us to understand everything. It tells us to trust Him.
The apostle Paul learned that lesson firsthand. He spoke of a “thorn in the flesh” that troubled him deeply. Three times he pleaded with the Lord to remove it. Surely Paul expected God to take it away. Instead, God’s answer was, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). The Lord did not remove the problem. He gave Paul the grace to endure it.
That is often where faith is tested. We trust God when He says yes. We trust God when He says wait. But do we trust Him when He says no? Paul never tells us that he fully understood God’s purpose for the thorn. What he learned was that God’s grace was enough, even when the burden remained.
The greatest example is found in the Garden of Gethsemane. Knowing the suffering that awaited Him, Jesus prayed, “Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done” (Luke 22:42). The cross was not what anyone would have chosen. Yet Jesus submitted Himself completely to the Father’s will because He trusted the Father completely.
That same challenge faces believers today. There will be times when we cannot see what God is doing. There will be prayers that seem unanswered and trials that linger longer than we think they should.
Isaiah 55:8–9 reminds us why: “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord. God sees what we cannot see and knows what we cannot know.
The true test of your faith is not when everything makes sense. The true test of your faith is when you don’t understand what God is doing, but you trust Him anyway. Sometimes the greatest act of faith is simply saying, “Lord, I don’t understand, but I know You do.”
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“What I write is not for everyone, but what I write is meant for someone.” – Dean Butler
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