I was thinking all day and the Holy Spirit reminded me of David's son. In 2 Samuel 12:13-15 Then David said to Nathan, "I have sinned against the LORD." Nathan replied, "The LORD has taken away your sin. You are not going to die. 14 But because by doing this you have made the enemies of the LORD show utter contempt, the son born to you will die. After Nathan had gone home, the LORD struck the child that Uriah's wife had borne to David, and he became ill." King David prayed for his infant son who was dying. God took the life of the little boy, and David said, "But now that he is dead...Can I bring him back again? I will go to him, but he will not return to me" (2 Samuel 12:23). David spoke under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit and indicated that he, David, would someday go to be with his little son. David was a believer who was redeemed and upon death went "non-stop" to Heaven.
I was born disabled.. whether its from my mother's sin, whether its result from Adam's sin (sinful nature) or God Sovereign plan "so that the work of God might be displayed in his life" as Jesus explained in John 9:3. You have to remember the following verses that God have been with each of us since the day of conception. Psalm 139:13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. Jeremiah 1:5 "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." Isaiah 45:9 "Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker, to him who is but a potsherd among the potsherds on the ground. Does the clay say to the potter, 'What are you making?' Does your work say, 'He has no hands'? In the New Testament, Paul reminded us of God's hands in Romans 9:21 "Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?" Later in Ephesians 1:11 "In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of Him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will." Romans 8:28 "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose."
I believe personally, that if a child grows up handicapped mentally, retarded, or whatever, and that child dies, God is not going to punish a child eternally for a decision he couldn't make. In the Gospels, Jesus said, "suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of heaven." In the Old Testament, "Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints." (Psalm 116:15).
God made mankind in His own image. He "set eternity in the hearts of men" (Ecclesiastes 3:11). We are temporal creatures*time in our hands, our feet, our bodies*that causes us to grow old and to die while at the same time, we have eternity in our hearts in His image. People will say that God cannot the demons even Satan himself as if He is on our side that He is unable to help us without our submission. God the Creator can control His creatures by moving undisturbed and unhindered toward the fulfillment of eternal purposes that He purposed in Christ Jesus before the world began. In God, no change is possible however, in us, change is impossible to escape. One of my favorite role model is David, who was acutely God-conscious that he was after God's own heart. To David, God was the one Being worth knowing. He threw himself at the feet of God and demanded to be conquered, and God responded by aking over his personality and shaping it as a potter shapes the clay. David focus on knowing God more than anything else. As A.W. Tozer once asked, "The real problem created by the doctrine of the divine Sovereignty has to do with the will of man. If God rules His universe by His sovereign decrees, how is it possible for man to exercise free choice?" Another quote, Martin Lloyd-Jones: "It is perilously close to being sinful for any person to learn doctrine for doctrine's sake."
Reading the Old Testament, great faiths of Jonah in flight from the will of God suffered no worse storm than did Paul in the center of God's will; the same wild sea threatened the life of both. And Daniel in the lion's den was in trouble as deep as was Jonah in the whale's belly. There are those who are not inclined to accept the truth that tribulations, difficulties, trials are for our good. From my experiences, I have learned that experiences do not need to cause defeat and failure, rather God uses them to refine me. Ten thousand trials cannot stop a Christian, cannot even slow me down, if only I meet my trials in a attitude of complete trust in God. History have revealed that the greatest Christians have come out of hard times and tough situations. We are to demonstrate our faith in God in our everyday life, not trusting in faith. If the Sovereign will of God things go against us, what do we have left? If life and health are placed in jeopardy, what about our eternal resources? We have Christ, who died for us; we have the Scriptures, which can never fail; we have the faithful Holy Spirit. If worst comes to worst, I have God in my heart. "We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, where Jesus, who went before us, has entered on our behalf. He has become a high priest forever, in the order of Melchizedek."*Hebrews 6:19-20.
What God's purposes are in those individual cases only God knows. Speculating of why's and how's bad things happen to Christians are really basically childish simply because of man's doctrines on faith and healing. The Psalmist expressed God's sovereignty over illness and death in this way, "Show me, O Lord, my life's end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life.....All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be." (Psalm 39:4,139:16).
