Listen.  No man can conclude where the heart of God stands by His hand.  Are you getting this?  Look ? God can and will kick butt and take names.  He can penalize us for our weird penchants.  He can spiritually smack us so hard that He makes Jackie Chan look like Urkel. All the while, He really really likes us. God loved his spiritual sons like Job and David, and in His love, He allowed for disastrous things to rock their world for their ultimate good.

So ? watch out when you conclude personally or with regard to others that God?s heart is against those whom His hand is seemingly against.  You might end up condemning the just whom God would not have unjustly condemned.

Thirdly, know that all cross providences that smack the saints are for the purpose of some noble good that God intends to prefer upon them.  Take Joseph, for example.  Joe got sold into slavery to a distant country through the envy and malice of his ministerial alliance.  Then brother Joseph was falsely imprisoned after he radically obeyed God.  Nevertheless, through all this intergalactic bad junk, The Dreamer was getting closer to his dream. 

Put that in your irony bong and smoke it! 

Check it out.  What Joseph?s brothers sought to diminish ? God used to promote.  His brothers sold Joseph so that he would not be exalted over them, yet he was exalted because he was sold. 

Hello!

My ClashPoint is this: We?ve got to remember, and I know this hurts all self-obsessed me-monkeys, but God is not the least bit obligated to give us a selfish, carefree, Yippee Land existence. He?s out to make us holy.  And all these strange, deep, dark providences that believers meet with will help us morph into His likeness if (and that?s a big IF!) we handle them wisely with kid gloves.  The Holy Spirit is out to work in us that which is pleasing in His sight and folks ? our flesh does not do the electric slide in that direction.  It usually takes a good shake down before we shape up.