7 Things God Wants You to Know When Life Doesn't Make Sense

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Even for a Christian, life on this tumultuous earth doesn’t always make sense. Bad things happen to good people. Natural disasters leave thousands homeless. The evil and the morally irresponsible come to power. God saves some, while others suffer. Prayers go unanswered. Life, it seems, is chaos, and God is nowhere to be seen.

But that’s not the truth of the world in which we live. We’re just too small to see the big picture.

God can see the entire picture. He knows what is happening to us, what has happened, what will happen. And He’s not just hanging there in the background, watching from the darkness—He’s there for you in ways you cannot imagine.

And what’s more, God loves you—you are His creation, created in His own image, and He has not abandoned you to the chaos of an uncaring universe.

To help you remember this, and to give you hope in what can seem like a hopeless time, here are 7 things God wants you to know when life doesn’t seem to make sense.

God Knows Your Pain

God knew the whole of the universe, including every life within it, before it was ever created. He doesn’t see time like us—He is outside of it, looking at the whole of eternity just as we might look at a painting on the wall. He knows our struggles, past and future, and He grieves for us.

At times, it might seem like your suffering falls on deaf ears, but God feels each and every pain alongside you. When He came to earth in the form of Christ, He felt everything you feel. He experienced loss, physical agony, psychological pain, terror, anger, and sadness.

No other god-figure in all of mankind’s mythology was willing to become weak, to suffer for its people. But the one, true God did, and so He understands you, and is actively involved in the human condition.

Far from being some faraway figure on a cold throne, God is truly a father, suffering right alongside His children. Your pain, no matter how private, does not go unnoticed, nor is it misunderstood.

“Can a mother forget her nursing child? Can she feel no love for the child she has borne? But even if that were possible, I would not forget you! See, I have written your name on the palms of my hands.”

-Isaiah 49:15-16

God Loves You

God doesn’t just know you. He loves you.

Love is an essential part of God’s unchanging nature. And the best part of God’s love? It’s unconditional.

You cannot earn the love of the God of the universe. There’s just nothing you can do that would warrant it. Compounding this, we are creatures of sin, constantly railing against the commands of God.

Instead, He gives it freely.

To understand this is to begin to understand God. First John 4:8 tells us that God does not just love, but that he is love. Love infuses all God does, including His anger, including his wrath and justice. Everything God does is motivated by His incomprehensibly perfect love.

God’s love, while bigger than the cosmos, is also personal. He knows you intimately, through and through—your every thought, habit, and movement. Nothing is hidden from him. Yet, still, He adores you.

“Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you.”

-1 Peter 5:7

God Fights for You

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God acts on His love for us, and has tipped the balance of the world in the favor of those who follow Him. But to avoid disappointment, it is important to understand how God fights for us.

God never promises us an abundance of earthly pleasure. In fact, He outright tells us that life isn’t going to be easy. You can thank the Fall for that.

If God isn’t protecting us against everyone and everything we might define as a threat, then what is He protecting us against?

The ultimate enemy. Sin.

Sin is what threatens to cut us off from God. It is what causes us to suffer, in the end. But with God’s protection, His grace, sin can no longer enslave you. Every single command God hands down to us is given for the express purpose of our protection. God knows us best, and knows the behaviors that lead to human suffering. He doesn’t forbid these behaviors out of spite, but for our protection.

What’s more is that God protects us where we are utterly helpless—in the spiritual realm. There is an entire unseen world of spiritual beings which struggle every day on your behalf. God holds spiritual evil back, sending out his angels, keeping it from overwhelming you so that you continue to remain free to choose Him.

“Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or terrified because of them, for the LORD your God goes with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.”

-Deuteronomy 31:6

God Gives You Strength

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There will come days when you feel utterly weak, and you don’t feel that you can continue. You’ll be at your lowest place. It will feel like the end.

But it’s not.

God doesn’t promise us freedom from weakness. That will come. Even God, as Jesus Christ, experienced that.

No—what God will give you is strength in weakness, the strength to endure and persevere, and to come out greater on the other side.

When Paul begged God to take away the “thorn” in his flesh, Jesus said, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in your weakness”. Paul didn’t muscle his pain away, but simply stood firm through the power of God, and continued on. Paul knew his weakness, and he knew where his strength came from.

That same strength is yours for the taking. Just ask!

“No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.”

-1 Corinthians 10:13

God Frees You

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You possess one of the most glorious gifts in all of creation. You use it every day, yet you may not even know it.

You possess free will.

You are made in God’s image, and so, like Him, you are able to exercise your free will, choosing how to live for yourself. You don’t have to choose God’s way. You can, in fact, live any way you please. While this gives us room to make terrible decisions that cause ourselves—and others—great misery, it is also an incredible gift.

If you consider the implications of free will, this gift explains much of what doesn’t seem to make sense in the world. For example, why did sin and death enter the world at all? Because God gave Adam and Eve a choice in the Garden. God does not create evil, but He does allow His creation to choose its own path. That isn’t to say He doesn’t guide us—He does. But in the end, we either choose God, or we choose to separate ourselves from Him, to our own detriment.

So when things don’t seem to make sense, remember this. God frees you. He allows you to exercise your will. Use it to choose Him, and you’ll reap the ultimate reward.

“You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love.”

Galatians 5:13-14

God Does Not Change

Do you know what the best part of God’s wonderful attributes? They are immutable—they will never change. Your God will never die. He will never falter or fail or stop being who He is. Ever.

When the entire world is in uproar and despair begins to close its dark fingers around you, remember that God is solid. He is your unchanging rock, perfect and permanent—the ideal defense against chaos.

This is the ultimate comfort. Here on earth, we fear for the ones we love, for those who take care of us and are important to our lives. The very nature of the world we live in is transitory. But with God, we have no such worry. He will simply always be there.

Nor does His trustworthiness change. Numbers 23:19 reads, “God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent; Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?”

God wants you to know that you can trust Him always. Take comfort in that beautiful fact.

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”

-Hebrews 13:8

All Will Make Sense One Day

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As we’ve learned, God sees the world in a fundamentally different way than we. While we see a tiny slice of history, measured in our span of human years, God sees eternity. We cannot know His mind, nor can we fathom His plans.

This is where faith comes in.

God promises that all of the senselessness of life will eventually make sense. While God does not create suffering and sin, even these things He bends to His will—He’s the master tactician, the highest planner.

This is declared throughout the Bible—God wants you to know this, that He has a handle on things, and that all of the threads are coming together, directed by His perfect hand.

If you love and follow God, you have nothing to fear in the end. God will reveal His master plan, to reach out and take you into His loving arms.

"Now we see things imperfectly as in a cloudy mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely."

-1 Corinthians 13:12