God is sovereign

Some people ask God to save a family member from death such as in cancer.  When the person dies, they turn away from God in anger.  This section is for such misunderstandings.

God is sovereign. This means He gets to make the final decision (yes, no, wait).  You may talk to him as Abraham did and he doesn't do what you thought he would.  You can

1.  accept He is God and you can't take him to court and get the outcome changed, so you "let it go" over time while minimizing your involvement with God (nurse a grudge toward him)

2.  give God the benefit of the doubt and back down and accept that this wasn't His will even though you don't understand it while you keep talking with God, getting to know him better, sharing your feelings

3.  continue to struggle for the rest of your life while partly trusting God and partly not trusting God, never resolving the situation, so you end up sometimes really happy and other times really complaining that He doesn't care

4.  explode around anyone associated with God

Here are several stories with different outcomes to consider that 2. might be the best choice.

II Samuel 12 shows King David fathered a child with Bathsheba, a woman married to an active duty soldier in David's army.  David attempted to get her husband to sleep with her so he would think it was the child of their marriage.  When that didn't work, David maneuvered her husband into an unprotected place in a skirmish and the enemy killed him.  You would think that was that, the cover up was good.  But God saw it and sent Nathan the prophet to David with a story that reflected what David had done, but was different enough that David wouldn't recognize himself in it.  David declared the judgment and Nathan said, "You're the man."  God struck David and Bathsheba's baby and he was very sick.

David in II Samuel 12:16 fasted and prayed all night repeatedly that God would spare the baby.  The servants couldn't get him to stop.  When the baby died, they were afraid to tell David because he might do something rash such as kill himself or kill one of them or become a hermit.  But David acted quite differently than they had expected.  He got up, took a shower, went to God's house and worshipped, then came home and ate.  The servants asked him about the change in his behavior.  To David, it was simple:  "While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept; for I said, 'who knows whether the Lord will be gracious to me and let the child live?'  But now he is dead; why should I fast?  Can I bring him back again?  I shall go to him, but he will not return to me."  (II Samuel 12:22-23)  Then David comforted Bathsheba.  David remained close to God which closely resembles 2. above.

II Kings 18 and 19 shows King Hezekiah had to deal with a proposed military attack by Sennacherib, king of Assyria, which was preceded by public mocking of Hezekiah's trust in God.  Hezekiah prays to God asking for protection while pointing out that the Assyrian king is mocking the living God Hezekiah is trusting.  Isaiah the prophet is sent by God to assure Hezekiah that He will take care of it.  The result was that the Angel of the Lord killed 185,000 Assyrian soldiers during the night as they slept.  Sennacherib was shortly thereafter killed by his own sons as he worshipped his god after he returned home with just few soldiers.

The story continues in II Kings 20 on a more personal level when God directs Isaiah to tell Hezekiah to get his affairs in order because the sickness Hezekiah has is going to kill him.  Hezekiah again prays to God to spare his life just after Isaiah leaves.  God tells Isaiah to go back to Hezekiah and tell him that because he prayed, God would give him another 15 years to live.  God would also give Hezekiah a sign so he would know it was true, but Hezekiah refined the nature of the sign and God worked the sign Hezekiah devised as opposed to His own.  You would think that Hezekiah is an excellent example of intercession!  But maybe God was removing Hezekiah from the scene to prevent something else from happening.  As Hezekiah enjoyed his extra 15 years, he made a political blunder which would adversely affect his and the whole country's sons.  Hezekiah showed his self-centeredness by calling the bad word "good" as his lifetime would not be affected but his sons' lifetime.  This might be a combination of 2. and 3.

John 9 shows Jesus walking past a man who was blind from birth.  His disciples wanted to know who sinned, the man who was blind or the man's parents.  They wanted to assign blame.  "Jesus answered, 'It was not that this man sinned or his parents sinned, but he was born blind in order that the workings of God should be manifested (displayed and illustrated) in him'."  (John 9:3)  To show that this blindness just happened, Jesus spit on the ground and took the mud and put it on the man's eyes and told him to wash in the Pool of Siloam.  The blind man did so and came back able to see.  Who knows, could it have been a birth defect, a mutated gene, bad water with disease in it that the mother got?  But Jesus fixed it.  And he fixed it with dirt plus His spit, dirt and water.  We came from the dust of the earth, we are mostly water, and Jesus who came to dwell with us put some of his spit, which today we know contains DNA, onto the man's deficient body parts and they were back in working order.

David's prayer was not answered, while he cared very much he continued to live his life with God.  Hezekiah's second prayer was answered but his sons were affected.  Hezekiah didn't care.  The blind man had enough to worry about without the disciples trying to determine cause and effect of sin.  He did nothing wrong and didn't even ask Jesus to heal him.  Jesus just healed him to teach some things about his mission to be the world's light.  By his behavior upon multiple questionings how he was healed he may have been a 2.

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