What is God doing?
He had a view of God passed down to him through his family and his experience with God. His understanding of God went something like this: obey God and he will bless you. Disobey God and he will crush you.
By the looks of things, he had been really, really good. A quiver full of kids and more warehousing space than should be allowed, this man had a roaring business. He had great friends and a great home. He treated his employees well, almost like family. His kids were careful to live a godly lifestyle and just in case they didn’t, he would offer a prayer of protection and seek forgiveness for them just in case they partied a bit too hard. He loved his life, his family, his company, and his God.
On this day, he went set out as if it were any other day. Prayer and praise, then off to the job of managing the family business. He was a little later into the office today than usual. He had a meeting on the other side of town. Yet, as he neared the campus, he was excited because business was doing great.
As he rounded the corner, however, a pile of twisted metal and steel lay where one of his warehouses had stood. He couldn’t get into the offices because of the destruction that he saw. Getting out of his car, one foreman arrived with bad news. There was a great storm that came up earlier that morning and a tornado ripped through the company complex. All his kids, who were part of the family business, were killed. Not only that, but the storm destroyed the entire business complex. Everything was gone.
Tears rolled down the man’s face as he sought to process all that happened. He could not explain it. He could not understand it. All he could do was stand where his empire had been and weep. His wife showed up. They simply held each other. Friends who heard about the destruction raced to his side. Sometimes in time of need, you don’t need people to say anything, but you need people to just be there. That was the actions of his friends. They remained with him for days. They mourned the loss with him.
He mentally walked through the last few weeks of his life. Had he done something that would have made God angry? Had he not done something God had told him to do? He couldn’t think of anything major. Maybe there was something seemingly insignificant he had overlooked. Though he knew he was not perfect, he could not think of anything that would lead God to bring the destruction and ruin to his life that had been brought upon him. He was at a loss to understand these events.
His wife and family were not. When he finally spoke, they begged him over and over to just confess the sin he had done and God would restore it all. However, he refused. He had searched his life and found nothing that would merit this level of pain and destruction. His friends offered no specifics to back up their call to repent.
He was now stuck. Did he continue his understanding of the actions of God or did he reject even the existence of God? Or should he consider a third way, that God was not as he thought. From his perspective it was as though God had betrayed him. How was he to respond to this betrayal?
He determined that he would confront God. God needed to explain himself. All he got was silence. Then another confrontation from his friends. Again, he called out for a forum with the creator to discuss how badly God had treated him. Silence. Confrontation from friends. The cycle continued.
Finally, God spoke. However, he didn’t respond to the man’s inquisition. God confronted the man on his smallness and inability to see and know the heart of the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-present God. How dare he challenge God.
Broken by God’s confrontation, but gratified that at least God showed up, the man accepted his fate.
Yet God was not done with him. God restored his family. He and his wife got pregnant again and had another quiver full of kids. His business rebuilt and it once again became the sprawling industry leader it once was.
But his view of God changed. The box was gone. He responded to the betrayal with the third way. He simply accepted that God was God. It took a betrayal, however to discover that.
In case you did not know recognize that story, it is a retelling of the biblical story of Job. But it could be your life or it mine. This is part of the journey that God takes us through. He has to destroy our image of God so that He can truly sit as king of our life. He has to betray us. By betraying, I mean that God betrays the image we have created of God and the box that we have put Him into. It is a betrayal of our understanding of how we believe God is supposed to act. Yet God does not betray us. Our idea of God betrays us.
There are moments in our life where to truly find God, we have to reject who we believe God to be. If you stay with him through the confusion, you find on the other side, God is who He said He was all along. But it might take a betrayal to begin to see Him as He really is.
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David is an entrepreneur, pastor, coach, and author. He has his doctorate from George Fox Seminary where he studied under Len Sweet, his M.Div. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and has done post graduate work in communications from the University of Alabama and the University of South Florida. He lives with his wife Brenna Phillips in Smyrna, DE. 
