Only genuine belief in the goodness of God and his commitment to his promises will get anyone to say “yes” to a deal that will make our lives harder. Why suffer for the sake of Christ? Because he calls us to do it and we believe he is good and he will work for our good in it.
God is not shaken by our honesty at how circumstances feel. We sometimes seem to think the only acceptable Christian response to anything terrible is to say, ‘God is good’ or ‘God is working this for good’ or some other Christian cliché. Those things are true, of course. God is good. God is working whatever it is for our good. But knowing that in our head doesn’t necessarily change how it feels.
I doubt Paul, when he was having his head bashed in with rocks for preaching the gospel, was going ‘God is working all things for my good’. Paul, I suspect, theologized about it later. Sometimes things just suck. We know our theology, we believe it, but what is happening is just awful. God isn’t offended nor undermined when we admit it.
It bears asking what we think we’re doing anyway by pretending to God—who knows everything—that we don’t feel the way we do. Like he’ll be fooled if we just go, ‘praise God because he’s good’, as if he doesn’t know how terrible we’re feeling. I think many of us are tempted to pray in such a way that you basically throw theological facts at God that he already knows, almost cliched phrases, to cover up the fact that you just feel awful, wish things would stop and frankly you think what you’re suffering is God’s fault! If I believe in a sovereign God, to some degree, I clearly do (theologically) think it is God’s fault. And if not quite so theologically driven, I am well aware—just like the rubbish Jeremiah had to put with simply because he was faithful—that much of the time it is doing what God wants i.e. being faithful that is the cause of my trouble.
The truth is, God knows what we think. He knows we believe what’s true. He knows, despite that, we feel awful because the situation is terrible. He isn’t undermined or upset when we admit we feel like we’re in the pit and we wish he’d do something about it. He isn’t even undermined when we tell him—because he knows we think it already—that we think it’s his fault. He’s sovereign, he’s in control, so why doesn’t he do anything. God is perfectly happy for us to tell him what we feel because he knows already. You’re not going to surprise him. We’re foolish if we think we can hide our true feelings from him.