“Trusting God is dangerous business. Unless we’re trusting Him for what He’s promised to provide, the step after trust is disillusionment.”

He then talks about Ted Turner, while in college, a friend of his died of cancer, though he was praying and believing for a healing, it didn’t come and then turned away from God. And now you can see the fruit of his bitterness of what he thinks of God.

That’s what why Larry was referring to disillusionment. My opinion is that too many people look at God as their genie, give me my wished and then I’ll be happy. As this book will go into further detail, what we believe God is and who he is, is even different for many Christians.

Next section begins with “Wju we’re alive at all”

Larry says that’s his problem with God. To people whose souls have been inundated with pain, God seems so unresponsive. We pray and nothing happens.

“What does it mean to hope in God as we continue to live in a world where good dreams shatter and God seems to do nothing about it?

I thought very good question. Guess where the answer lies? If you said, the Bible, you are correct!

Larry says it demands how we naturally look at lif. It demands an understanding why we’re alive at all, why God keeps us living in ths world for so long before we go to heaven.

Could it be that we have a wrong understanding of what life is meant to provide? We want godly kids, mates, help others, close friends, to enjoy God’s peace. Then comes “biblical” strategies for seeing that our dreams come true. They’re called “Godly parenting” and “discipline of spiritual living, principles of financial stewardship” all designed to give us a legitimately good time. He asks..”What’s wrong with that?”

We long to experience a compelling pleasure that eliminates all pain.

As Christians, “we give up immediate pleasures in order to later experience a deeper kind of pleasure, but we expect to feel that pleasure soon, certainly before we die. We insist on the internal good time of peace, of self-respect, of feeling at least pretty good if not full alive.”

I know as I look back at some of my rougher moments and life and realized the peace I had wasn’t true peace but it was more faith peace. What I mean is the peace I was getting was that this wast momentary, a test of my faith, darkest before dawn, blessings right around the corner.

I definitely didn’t have the peace that Paul talks about, whether good or bad times, I remain the same.

The problem is when dawn doesn’t come, you go through one trial to the next one and the last trial never gets fixed in the way you think it should be corrected. This usually leads to one thing, complete apathy, some form of depression because we are putting our joy in circumstances and not in our relationship with Him. I know a few times in life I just pretty much went through the motions of life b/c of my wrong thinking.

So now my prayer is.. God this doesn’t matter, just do a work in me, draw me closer to you because I can NOT do this in my own strength, You have to do it in me.

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