He didn’t bring you here.

No, God did not bring you to this situation.

That’s not how God works. It’s actually an immature way to think about God.

The Creator of our universe is in control of everything, absolutely. But when He created you, me, and every other human, He gave us free will. In His infinite power and wisdom, He gave us choice. We get to decide how things go. We can be in or out with Him.

He loves us either way, but.

Always a but.

With the power of choice comes consequences, cause and effect.

Taking it back to middle school science class, when one thing happens, it causes a reaction or multiple reactions. It’s what we teach our kids when they want to touch a hot stove. If you touch this hot stove, it will burn you. You have the power to touch this stove when I’m not looking, when you’re being sneaky, or when you want to disobey me, but there will be a direct consequence from the hot stove. You will burn your little hand. You will be in pain. You might have to take a trip to the hospital. You might not be able to use your hand for a while. You could have a scar.

God works the same way.

You make choices and while He will never leave you, some of the things that happen in your life are a direct result of your good or bad choices. I like to give credit where credit is due, but giving God credit for all the shitty things happening in your life is not 100% accurate.

It’s human nature to do dumb stuff.

It’s not God’s nature to do dumb stuff.

So that bad choice you made, He might have known you were going to make it and wasn’t on board with it, but He didn’t stop it either.

Sometimes you have to touch the hot stove and learn to use your wounded hand differently to learn the lesson.

Sometimes you have to see the direct consequences of your actions before you learn to be better, listen more, and be wiser.

Stop saying if God brought you to it, He’ll bring you through it because there’s a good chance your own bad choices brought you to it.

Also, it’s important to remember God can’t sin. He is too perfect, too pure, to sin. So if your choices in life can be traced back to greed, selfishness, lying, deceitfulness, betrayal, not loving someone, jealousy, competition, lack of empathy, lust, or a million other things not of God—HE DIDN’T BRING THESE THINGS TO YOU. You did.

You got yourself into this mess.

The good news is we’re all in this mess together. We live in a sinful world, and we are all sinners. So you’ve got company. We’re not alone here in this mess you and I have made for ourselves.

But the even better news is He’s here too.

Not to act as some magical creature who snaps His fingers and solves all our problems, but to offer us peace, comfort, calm, and wisdom in the midst of the chaos we’ve created if we ask Him for it.

Sin is literal separation from God. He can’t be with us when we’re in the midst of sin. But He’s there before and He’s there after. Which is comforting because we can come to Him when we’re in the struggle and on the cusp of something that will hurt us, and He’s there in the aftermath helping us pick up the pieces.

The free will He’s afforded us lets us do whatever we want.

The blood of the Cross covers our butts (and all the other parts as well, like that incredibly sinful elbow of yours) when we’re in too deep with our sin.

The point of being in relationship with God is to continually be on a journey to lessen our involvement in sin. There is no sinless life besides Jesus. So our goal, our end result, is heaven. We’ll never be perfect and whole and blameless here. But spending time in God’s Word, understanding His heart, learning about His interactions with people in the Bible, and really living in His grace and mercy should change our narratives, both internal and external.

We get to less sin by learning from our sins, asking for forgiveness, and coming back to home base (God) to ask for Godly correction, instruction, and wisdom.

We all burn our hands on the stove.

A lot.

Sometimes when one hand is on the stove and we’re saying “ouch” we’re also moving the other hand in the direction of the stove, because we’re forgetting what it feels like WHILE WE’RE STILL DOING IT.

Humans are fun like that.

God didn’t bring your marriage to ruin.

God didn’t make bad financial choices for you.

God didn’t betray your friends.

God didn’t make you lose your job.

God didn’t take your children away.

God didn’t make your life hard.

But He’s there with you. He’s telling you how to make it better. It’s probably not what the world is telling you. It’s probably not what your nature is telling you. But He’s always right, He’s always just, and He’s always love.

He didn’t bring you to this, but He will be with you in it. That is what the Bible says.

I cried out to him with my heart, his praise was on my tongue. If I cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened, but God has surely listened and heard my voice in prayer. Praise be to God, who has not rejected my prayer or withheld his love from me! –Psalm 66: 17-20