Wow, it's been a long time since I posted something deep. Where have I been? I feel like I've forgotten myself.

That said, let this be a refinding of myself.

There is something I just don't understand. How can people praise God when they are in real pain?

I'm listening to MercyMe's song "Bring the Rain." I like the sound of it. It's calming. But when I listen to the words, I just don't understand them.

I can count a million times
People asking me how I
Can praise You with all that I've gone through
The question just amazes me
Can circumstances possibly
Change who I forever am in You

Maybe since my life was changed
Long before these rainy days
It's never really ever crossed my mind
To turn my back on you, oh Lord
My only shelter from the storm
But instead I draw closer through these times
So I pray

Bring me joy, bring me peace
Bring the chance to be free
Bring me anything that brings You glory
And I know there'll be days
When this life brings me pain
But if that's what it takes to praise You
Jesus, bring the rain

I am Yours regardless of
The dark clouds that may loom above
Because You are much greater than my pain
You who made a way for me
By suffering Your destiny
So tell me what's a little rain
So I pray

Holy, holy, holy
Is the Lord God Almighty

I've been having a rough time lately with Calvinism. It's an old battle. I've been dealing with it since I met Stephen. It's not his fault--it's just the fact of being intimately connected to a Calvinist that causes all these struggles. I made that choice and I knew from way early on it was going to cause major inner battles. I just wish I could come to some kind of resolution.

Calvinists seem to do well with the question of pain because they tell themselves God is ultimately in control, and there's nothing that happens without his consent. I, on the other hand, struggle with it a lot because I don't understand how a loving God could create people and decide--before he created them, mind you--that he was going to send them to hell.

I'll tell you what, being around Calvinists has at least made it make sense on a big-picture level. Everything for God's glory--and because of God's justice. I've miraculously managed to get that on a big-picture level. But when you get down to the details, oh man, that's a whole new can of worms opened up. And I, my dear, am the queen of getting stuck on the details.

I'm not even sure how to start explaining without getting myself to the point of fury--and I've really had enough of that.

The details I get stuck on are people's personalities and their indecisiveness. Have you watched someone be indecisive? Go back and forth and back and forth and back and forth until they finally decide? Or sometimes never decide?? Why would God ordain a person to be indecisive if he's already ordained what they are going to decide? Does that make any sense at all?

And what about when people decide for good? What if they aren't even Christians? There's this idea of God working in our lives so that we'll turn to him. Non-Calvinists (Wesleyans? Arminians?) call it prevenient grace. Because of their emphasis on free will, they say it's God's way of trying to win that person over, and that he does that with everybody in a multitude of ways. Calvinists, on the other hand, call it common grace and say that God only does that with people he chooses that will come to him.

But how can they say that? How do they know that a person, may be a nonChristian or even completely anti-Christian, who chooses to, for instance, stay married for life instead of divorcing, will ever become a Christian? What if those people never become Christians?

What it boils down to is that I just don't understand how a God who, in the Bible's own terms, is love can believe that predetermining whom of his creation will go to hell and whom he will save is a demonstration of love. I just don't understand that at all.

-Stephanie

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