As to why God doesn't intervene, lobster, the simplest, most honest answer I can give is "I don't know". I won't give you pat answers, because i know as well as you do that pat answers don't answer the hard questions we have deep within our soul. So I won't even try.I wouldn't define God's job title, honestly, because there's so much I don't comprehend. Like why the prayers of those who "use" their faith for their own financial gain seem to have effect, while the prayers of those who pray for simple sustenance seemingly go unanswered. I don't think your faith is small in any way, lobster, because you believe DESPITE the nagging questions. People with small faith are those who allow themselves to definitively discard God entirely because of those questions, in my opinion.

Great response Gid! I too don't know. As one who believes and trust in HIm I have no answers too, I even sometimes ask the questions. Sometimes I wonder too why can't the people in our world who are suffering not suffer anymore. Why, why, why to so many questions. I can't give you any pat answers either, I wont. All I can say to keep on doing what you're doing for her. You are there and you will make a difference in her life. Perhaps you and your family ar ein the right place after all.

Great article.

I can't answer as to why God allows say child abuse or murder to go on.  I don't believe He causes it, but I do believe He is all powerful and could stop it IF He wanted too.

So, then, WHY doesn't He?

There are diff answers from diff people.  The only thing I know to be true is this.  I was a child of physical and sexual abuse.  I was homeless for a period of time as a kid and lived on the streets with my siblings.  I could make a list of all the horrible things I saw as a child, or were done to me, but I won't.

God may not have stopped those things from happening to me.  But you know what He DID do?  He took the emotional baggage of it all from my heart, the anger, the rage, the fear, the hurt...But He didn't take it until I asked Him too...and then only when I TRULY was willing to give it up.

That may sound stupid, but for awhile I asked Him to take the pain of it but still clung to it like a thirsty man to a glass of cold water.  In my heart I thought my emotions and the fire they gave me, defined my personality.  But I was wrong, so wrong.

Do you think its an accident the young girl you care about is in your life?  I don't.  God may not have stopped the evil (though one day He will stop it completely) but He is there to pick up the pieces and help heal the wounds.

It may not be a pat answer, but its the truth as I know it.  And sometimes I still grapple with the fact He allows it at all.  But in the end, He is God.  God is good.  And I will trust His judgment.

Maybe it has something to do with that freedom of choice people are supposed to have. People can be evil if they want to be...and they often wreak havoc on others because they can. They may be tainted or just warped...but if we're given free will then God cannot intervene...that would go against that decree. As to why other random acts happen, I cannot be sure....maybe it's to add a little drama to life. I prefer just try and deal with what comes my way...there's no point in wondering why things happen or why God lets them happen because he's never going to tell us and we're never going to find out, that is...in this realm of existence, anyway. The most effective way to look at it is...things happen, and they're going to keep happening so might as well deal with it. Of course, I'm not all that religious either...I think of God as more of an observer and pokes a finger in here and there to cause something good to happen...other than that he lets us run around in our little ant farm to do what we will.

And that's enough speculation for today.

~Zoo

How strong does one's faith have or need to be? Does anyone know? I doubt it.

As strong as it needs to be to secure ones salvation.

What is God's Job Anyway?

He spends all day setting impossibly high standards that you have no chance of meeting in order that you live your whole life feeling guilty about something everyone's telling you you're not spiritually mature enough to properly understand anyway.

Well, I'll admit of not being a religious person in the sense of not going to church and not relating to religious things too often. I do, however, believe in God. I just see him a bit more different than most here do. I think God is all powerful and I believe in him due to some experiences I have had in life that would make most people think I just plain crazy. I have been witness to miracles, enough to make me a believer for life and death.

I see life not as some kind of board game where God moves pieces around and choses whether you should get a free out of jail card or land on the highest priced location where you would go bankrupt, but more like a test. They say there is life after death, they you either go to Heaven or Hell depending on what you did during you life on Earth. We are put to the test to see if we are worthy to enter the gates of Heaven or burn in the fires of Hell. Every choice one makes in life helps decide your fate after death. I believe, like Zoologist03 put it so nicely, that he does poke his finger around once in a while to either test our strenghts, will and faith and to make what we see as miracles tor remind or let us know that he's watching. Why do bad things happen? Why do they seem to happen so often to good people? Maybe it's all part of his plan to test us, maybe it's the effects of a cause made by people who do bad things, maybe these people were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I have had a very difficult childhood. While I never had child abuse problems (at least not the kind most people think of when they hear these words), I was ignored quite a bit. Most everything I know that makes me who I am today I tought myself, my mom was usually too busy working to give us what she could provide. I love her a lot and thank her for everything she did and still does. She made sure I stayed a good kid, but somehow she did not need to work hard on that for this behaviour was built into me. I have always been a nice, kind, gentle person, but as the years go by one sometimes has to have a bit of a dark side in order to survive in this world. I learned that the hard way. I see it as all part of life, but I am honest when I say that I do not do the good things I do (keep in mind I am not perfect and will sometimes do things that are not so good) to secure my place in Heaven. I will take what is coming to me when the time comes without any questions. I will always believe I have always done the right thing, but that is not up to me to decide once my time comes. But at least I can die happy knowing that "at least I tried" (got this from Clinton).

I didn't quite understand completely the story of the little girl (not that you gave big details, it's understandable) but if by what you say here is any indication, maybe your question:

Will a miraculous intervention occur during her teenage years that re-direct the course of her life?

has already been answered the moment she came into your life. You do what you think is best for her, hopefully things will turn for the better. But keep in mind, when you ask:

Will she overcome her circumstances and be a successful adult?

that will be up to her to decide when she grows up, reguardless of those around her whether they help, encourage or believe in her or not. Tova is the perfect eample of what I mean.

Will God continue allowing conflict and funk to deepen her pain?

Evil will have to be eliminated completely for this to ever happen to her or anyone else. Pain and suffering is part of human nature. Women feel pain and suffer while giving birth to a child, people suffer when their hearts are broken, there will always be conflict because everyone thinks differently as life was intended to. It's up to us to either except the bad with the good, do our best to change as much bad as possible or just give up and blow our brains out. It's up to us in the end.

I am not giving, what many here call a pat answer, only what I believe in my heart that God and life are all about.

I'm glad I'm not the only one on the planet trying to figure this thing out. Thanks to all of you who responded. Your experience, strength, and hope provide much needed insight!

Perfect.

I agree. Scoffpiggy's response was one of my favorites. Thanks for stopping by! Hope you are doing well.

I, as well, like your's and Brandie's fav.

Trinitie

Some people say God is merciful but they commit murder mercilessly in his name. How can it be.
Some people say God is creator but they destroy his creation. How can it be.
Some people say God is owner of whole world but they claim ownership for a piece of land. How can it be.
Some people say God is all powerful but by their evil acts they only want to prove the other way. How can it be
Some people say they are servants of All Powerful & All Merciful God but by their acts they want to prove other way. How can it be.

dorks!

Tenille, I didn't even bother to read any of the comments that were left before me so please pardon me if I repeat anything that anyone has already posted. I have known you since my very first days as a Christian and truely am blessed that I met you at the time of life that I did because most of the people at Navarro knew me from my wild days and weren't willing to believe that I truely did love the Lord and wanted to serve him. We both know that I am very far from your typical Bible-thumping Christian who will ever give you some typical Sunday School answer to any of your life questions. But what I will tell you that is as long as you continue to ask yourself the wrong questions you will continue to search for the wrong answers!

You know alot about where I come from (though we haven't truely talked in a few years) and have knowledge of the fact that I have had to overcome a few of the hardest life situations a person can be dealt. I have been through some of the darkest times that you can experience through life and spent quite a few years of my juvenile life in lock ups and placements. And I too spent many a nights wondering how if there was a God he would allow me to have to suffer through all the trials and tribulations that I had to endure. But when I finally came to know Christ I realized that I had spent my entire life asking all the wrong questions, and all of us know that as long as we ask the wrong questions we are going to continue to get the wrong answer.

I think that as long as we sit and question God's integrity about how he handles the balance of Good and Evil we will continue to look in the wrong direction for insight. I know it has been said a hundred thousand times about the fact that God will not give one person more than he can endure but I honestly think that that is what life boils down to. He knows to what extreme each one of us can be pushed and within that he uses life to challenge us. There are many people who would have broke and crumbled having to deal with all the adversity that I dealt with by the age of 18 but God didn't allow it to happen to just anyone, he allowed it to happen to me. He knew without having to endure all of it I would have never come to know and rely on him. Just as the circumstances you endured led you to find Christ and place him as the one who directed your life he knows that this little girl if she chooses him will be able to over come everything hurdle that has been placed in her life and find him and begin to run the race that he has laid out before her.

As long as we are on this earth we are going to live in a world that is a battle ground of good vs evil and have to be prepared to see things that we cannot ever imagine a "gracious God" allowing to happen. But at the end of the day we have to understand that this is not Heaven and we are not living in a perfect world. We are living in a world that has been corrupted by evil and sin and we are called to be the Light to this world. It will not always be easy and we will not always understand why things happen but for crying out loud if we asked God to right every single wrong and him make every situation easy for us to overcome where in the world would faith and trust come into play? Why would we have needed Jesus and his sacrifice on the cross?

I don't think that the question we should be asking ourselves is "how does God allow these things to happen" but rather "How am I going to use each of these events and situations to further the name of Christ"! Nothing that this little girl has endured and overcome has snuck up on God, he never woke up one day and said to himself "How in the world did that happed to this little girl, that wasn't part of my plan". He knew long before she was ever even created that this was going to happen and it is by our faith and persistence in seeking God and leading this little girl to him that he is going to be Glorified through all the evil and dark things she has had to endure. Evil things are going to happen as long as we are in this corrupt place known as earth, the best we can hope for is that we find a way to use each and every circumstance that we come upon to bring Glory to the King of Kings.

In closing God's job is to be just that God! He has never left or forsaken you or the little girl that is in question here. But at the same time he isn't going to try to make decisions for either of you, if he did what kind of relationship would that be anyway? God isn't looking for robots, if he wanted that he would have created that. Rather he wants children who love him and seek him through every trial and tribulation that life brings there way. There are going to be good times and rough times but at the end of the day God is right there just as he said he would always be. I don' think that when we trust in him that we ever just limp through life, but rather we roll through obstacles all the while growing closer and more life Christ. Do we pass on some of the hurt and anguish from our lives? Of course we do but it just speaks even louder the dedication and love of Christ to help us overcome those trials.

P.S. I don't think your faith in Christ is small because you lack trust in him, rather I would say your faith in Christ is growing as you continue to pursue answers to the questions in which you have in your heart. I don't think there is ever a wrong question that you can ask God to answer for you!