Is it ok to have honest questions about God?
The short answer is:
Yes.
Christians can sometimes feel that they are not meant to question God, or to get angry with him, or find parts of the Bible difficult. “Maybe if I have questions I don’t love God enough. Maybe there’s something wrong with my faith. Maybe I’m too sinful. Maybe I’m too dumb.”
These kind of thoughts can lead us to hide our issues from other Christians, and from God, slowly suffocating our relationship with him.
Time to air those questions
So we thought it was time to get those secret questions out, give them a dust down and start looking at them together. In our new series we can’t promise to have all the answers but we very much encourage the act of questioning and wrestling with the issues they bring up.
Starting Sunday 17th Jan 2021 we will look at questions such as, Why does God allow so much suffering? What’s the point of praying if God knows the future? Why are some parts of the Bible so hard to understand? What is God doing in these difficult times? These are all questions that came from members of the congregation.
God wants us to ask questions. Especially difficult ones. We know this because Jesus asked them all the time (e.g. Matt 6:21, Matt. 12:48, Luke 10:36). The Old Testament is also full of the people of God asking questions, being honest about their issues and even literally wrestling with God.
You’ll find our services on YouTube, and our sermons can be listened to on the website www.christchurchdownend.com/podcast, on most major podcast providers or follow the links on this page!
Here is the series outline.
Talks and further resources
Talk 1 – Why does God allow so much suffering?
Talk 2 – Why does God allow people to suffer death?
Talk 3 – What’s the point of praying?
Talk 4 – Is the Bible still relevant?
Talk 5 – Where is God in this pandemic?
Podcast episode – Is it ok to doubt and question God?
Old Talk – Unanswered Prayer – why does God heal some people and not others?
God on Mute: Engaging the Silence of Unanswered Prayer by Pete Greig – This book is written by the leader of the 24-7 prayer movement, sharing his own experience of the miraculous power of prayer alongside the pain of unanswered prayer and the common human struggle to find faith with that paradox. In particular in light of his wife’s diagnosis of a brain tumour. https://www.eden.co.uk/god-on-mute/
The Unbelievable podcast – this is a podcast based on dialogue that has been going for 15 or more years and has covered every topic under the sun and is immensely useful for seeing different sides of various discussions be it Christian vs non-Christian or differing Christian
standpoints.
https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Shows/Saturday/Unbelievable
How could a loving God possible allow so much suffering?– Andrew Wilson sermon that is very helpful https://www.bethinking.org/would-a-good-god-allow-suffering/how-could-a-loving-godpossibly-allow-so-much-suffering
UCCF – Bethinking resources – Over the last 10 years UCCF have produced a series of resources to help students explore the gospels of Mark, Luke and John. Accompanied with those resources are videos they have produced to answer spinoff questions and there is now a really good bank of videos – some of them are answers and some of them are stories.
https://www.bethinking.org/index
Join in the conversation.
We would love to hear your feedback or questions you are asking at the moment with the form below!