Today’s topic is, “When I have problems, is God punishing me?”  I don’t think so.  I don’t think God punishes.  However I do believe he will allow things to happen to us, that He has no control over.  It’s kind of like this: If you have the ability to stop a crime, but you don’t, are you affecting it?  Yes, you are affecting the outcome, however you directly had nothing to do with it, yet you didn’t stop it.  Kind of mind boggling if you think about it.  I think God allows things to happen to us sometimes, perhaps to learn, or perhaps simply because we didn’t come to Him for help.  I don’t think God dabbles in every single thing we do in life.  I believe He will help us; however I don’t He’s got His hands in everything.  Does he have the ability to?  Sure, but I don’t believe it works that way.

If God did everything for us, we would be puppets, wouldn’t we?  Even devout Christians.  Do we want God to control our lives?  I want him to be my co-pilot.  Not that I don’t want him making decisions, but it’s just that He leaves some of them to us.  So when we have problems, is it God?  No, but there are consequences to things.  Things we do cause bad things to happen sometimes, and what’s our favorite thing to do?  Blame it on God, and point a finger.  It’s funny that we seem to be closest to God when something isn’t right in our life, but very distant when things are going good.  That’s how it is for me anyway.  When life is good, I’ll be honest, I forget to pray.  I feel guilty about that but I can’t help it.  In closing I believe that it is solely ourselves that cause bad things to happen, however had we prayed in the first place, God may not have allowed those things to happen.