Do you ever feel disappointed by God?  Does your experience of Him sometimes not match your expectations?  We might wonder where God is in our everyday lives.  We may wonder whether we can really trust Him, and we’re probably more likely to feel this way when bad things happen.  The Bible tells us in Romans 8:28 –

“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”

Paul (author of Romans) says he knows this, but do we always?  Do we trust that good comes from “all things”?  And when we don’t see good come, how do we react?

We might think good things are not happening to us because we don’t “love God” enough, so we might blame ourselves.  Maybe we think that some things “just happen” and have no purpose.  Maybe over time we learn to think most things are like that?  We might think Paul didn’t really mean what he wrote about God.

It’s natural to want “good” things.  We may want more money, a better job, better relationships, more possessions, and think that when bad things happen, it’s just a matter of time before some corresponding blessing comes along, because God is supposed to work through “all things” for our good. But when it seems like He doesn’t we might feel disappointed.  What are we missing?

Could it be that the problem is with our expectations of God, not with God Himself?  For example, do we misunderstand what “good” “things work together for”?  Is our definition of “good” the same as His?

Think about what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 1:26 “For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.”

It is not necessarily God’s intention to make us “good” by “worldly standards.”  His standards are different, and He doesn’t want us to value the worldly wisdom, which tells us it is “good” to be “powerful” or to be “noble” or even “wise” in the world’s eyes.  God has more important things in mind.

So, what is the “good” that everything works towards?  Paul wrote in Romans 8:29, which comes right after the earlier verse about how “all things work together for good”:

“For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.” – Romans 8:29

The “good” that God works for is our conformity to the image of Christ.  Not our pre-conceived definition of “good” based on our values, or the world’s.    He won’t use “all things” to give us more of what the world thinks is important.

What does it mean to be conformed to the image of Jesus?  In Jesus we see the perfect image of the love of God, described in 1 Corinthians 13:4-5 like this:

“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful”

So, God, through “all things,” works to make us more patient and kinder.  Less envious, boastful, arrogant and rude.  He makes us less insistent on our own way, and therefore less irritable and resentful.

Therefore, we might have to change what we value.  We must modify our priorities.  Anything that happens to us, whether we consider it “good” or not, God can use to make us more like Christ.  More like the person we will be in heaven.  More like the person we should want to be.  Then God will not disappoint us.

“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”