If You're Good, Good Things Will Happen to You

There are plenty of people in the world who have this premise:  Good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people.  In fact, Job's friends in Scripture believed this at the core of their beings and that is why they believed that Job was lying.   He held on to his integrity, swore he had not done anything evil, and they just kept coming back at him.   Their message was this:  "If you would just confess all the evil you are doing, God will forgive you and bless you.  But you are hiding secret sins -- if you weren't bad things wouldn't have happened to you."

If you are fortunate, you have lived a life where you have done good and good has happened to you in return.... and you can agree with Job's friends.  But, if you are like many of us, you have had a lot of things happen to you that were not good when you were doing your best to please God.

In the first chapter of Job when he had everything taken away, He said this:  “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, And naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; Blessed be the name of the Lord.” 

And the chapter concludes, "In all of this Job did not sin nor charge God with wrong. 

Job didn't do anything wrong, nor did he accuse God of wrongdoing.  And he recognized what Jesus would later point out in Matthew 5:  that the rain falls on the just and the unjust.  

If you are feeling like maybe you did something wrong and that is why you are facing hard times, let that go.  Recognize that stuff happens.... and that the Lord gives and takes away.  And then bless Him, but don't charge Him with wrong.