Why Struggle with God?

Had a hard time deciding on what to call this post. I want to do a round of posts touching on what makes it hard to just trust and obey God & know He is love. There is wind of a new reformation blowing more & more as i survey the blogosphere & other places. A lot of discussion on transformation and breaking free from worn-out and dysfunctional patterns of relating to God.

God declares Himself love. He defines His very nature & character as love. Jesus is the exact representation of God in flesh and is love. Jesus said God as Father surely knows how to give good gifts to His children, way more than any human father does. I write here as a firm evangelical, but wanting to explore from a place where I struggle with understanding God even as I reside within His kingdom. There are many I see on blogs lately proclaiming a new freedom of leaving legalism and lawkeeping behind as far as relating to God. The institutional church and its rules & regulations on how to *fit in* are seen as void of the real zest which His Spirit supplies, and a shackle which fails to let Jesus followers experience the life He so longs us to have in Him.

i see and recognize the validity of these critiques, but often the ones saying them spent many years to come to the point where they now discover a newness of which they had not fathomed before, and they question those who may still not be where they are in how they view realting to God. Calvinist doctrine states God is utterly holy and unblemished and cannot tolerate even a hint of sin. He is all powerful and by virtue of being so, He can choose to save anyone He chooses, and also condem anyone He chooses. Their view holds Jesus came only for the *elect* Whoever they may be. Talk to people holding this view in chatrooms or forums and they will say they hope they are *elect* but cannot know for sure till they enter eternity. Wow. Quite a precarious way to live knowing eternity is forever isn't it???

If God is love, and I believe He is,why would He do such a thing as to make beings whom He chooses to let die and suffer simply because He can??? Is not His mercy more a testament to His character than His power??? Mercy triumphs over judgment His Word states. Jesus forgave those who crucified Him on the cross, the worst of all conceivable sins, why then would anyone state in strict terms that He came to save only a special *elect* and the rest of us can just go to hell??? I feel like Spock here, logic rejects this notion.

I have much more in considering pain and suffering and consequences, but those will be dealt with in other posts. maybe one good thing about my heart issues, God helps me cut through the junk a lil more easily to seek and grab hold of Him in more intimate ways, even as I battle myself to do so. Why do you struggle with God??