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“God’s love is a protecting love, but it’s not always a preventing love.”

From a thought in 10 Choices: A Proven Plan to Change Your Life Forever by James MacDonald, (Click on the title to go to Amazon.com to buy the book.)

And that is a very important distinction.  My parents loved me very much and they did everything they could to protect me but they didn’t always prevent things from happening because they knew they would help me learn and help me grow. 

James says, “God doesn’t always keep hard things from happening. Here’s why. He has higher purposes for our pain.”  Yes, but if he really loved me but He does really love me and I can trust Him.

He goes on, “God may allow pain to humble us. When we are brought low by pain, we see how much we need Him. One of C. S. Lewis’s best-known comments describes pleasure as God’s whispers and pain as God’s megaphone!”

Another reason is, “God sometimes allows pain to restore us. Some of you were so far from God, off on your own, running away from God, going who knows where with your future. God allowed some hard thing in your life so that the pain of it brought you back to Him. If you would have never turned to Him without that heartache, isn’t it true that in some sense that pain was a very loving thing for God to allow? Wasn’t it that hurt that brought you to the wonderful place of asking for His help? A hundred years from today, as awful as that pain was, you’ll thank God for it if you choose to let its purpose be fulfilled in you.”

And then, “Sometimes God allows pain to refine us. This refining fire allows us to be more like Him. I’ve said to my wife, Kathy, many times, ‘I hate to think of the person that I would be, apart from God in my life.’ I shudder to imagine where I would be without God’s refining influence. Without God allowing difficult things into my life, what kind of husband and father would I be today? What kind of pastor or friend would I be? What kind of man would I be without the excruciating hurts that have driven me to my knees before the God who loves to refine me?  Looking back, it’s His love and mercy I see, even when His protection does not always prevent pain in my life.”

I have found that true over and over in my own life, my wife’s life, and my kids’ lives.  God’s love for me can be trusted.  I am so glad that I chose to follow Him.


So what do you choose?
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