Furthermore, it must be glaringly obvious that while God’s heart is filled with indescribably kind intentions toward His people, that doesn’t mean that nothing bad will ever happen to them. Many arm themselves with a fearlessness before God, crossing their fingers tightly and holding their thumbs that if they believe hard enough, God will prevent bad things from happening in their lives. This is a wrong concept of the kind intentions of God. This is a wrong understanding of the beauty of God.
You will notice that David said, “Though war break out against me…” Here the bad thing has happened. God has chosen not to withhold the evil actions of other people against him. Here God has chosen to allow His people to endure something terrible. Does that mean His intentions are not kind? Does that mean He is not beautiful? No! And I say that with vehemence. Absolutely nothing ever happens in God’s world, to His people that is not specifically engineered by the kind intentions of God for the overwhelming good of His people and for His glory. When looking back on ever stroke of misfortune in your life from eternity, you will be spellbound at the indescribable wisdom of God. You will see that that was the absolute best thing He could have done in that moment of time in order to bring about the best possible result in that moment for ever and ever.
What I am saying is that the kind intentions of God do not purchase you immunity from bad experiences in life, as some are teaching. My confidence is not in consoling myself with the thought that God won’t let bad things happen to me. My confidence, like David’s is that even if the entire universe turns against me and I have to endure the most horrific sufferings imaginable, every moment of those sufferings is in the hand of God and I know God has kind thoughts toward me. I know that even though I have to go through this present hardship, God is thereby purchasing a joy and delight for me forever that cannot be compared to anything else in the universe. The joy of looking forward to the things God has prepared for me in His desirable intentions, even if I must suffer on the way there, far outweighs the false comfort of foolishly believing that God won’t let anything bad happen to me.
It appears that this wrong notion constitutes salvation for some. They believe in God as a God on whom they can depend to give them a comfortable, wealthy, pleasant life. They “anoint” their homes, covering them with “the blood of Christ” and worship the God who will thereafter never allow a criminal to break in and violate and destroy. The “payoff” they are getting from God—safety—is their motivation for worship. Their faith is something of a bargain. In believing in Jesus they understand they have the bargain of getting the life they always wanted, and they also inherit eternal life. This is very different from the Christian life that resolves to rest in the hand of God no matter what. For Jesus, the “no matter what” was the gruesome and bloody experience of the cross. Yet even in that, God’s intentions were kinder than in any other act in all time and space.
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