"God only Wise..."

I have been reading Packer's Knowing God.  If you have read it, you know the value of it.  If you have not read it - borrow it, check it out, purchase it.  Determine to read it immediately.  Do not get it and set it on the shelf to read "some day."

Ch. 9 "God only Wise"
"God's almighty wisdom is always active, and never fails. All his works of creation and providence and grace display it, and until we can see it in them we just are not seeing them straight.  But we cannot recognize God's wisdom unless we know the end for which he is working.  Here many go wrong.  Misunderstanding what the Bible means when it says that God is love (see John 4:8-10), they think that God intends a trouble-free life for all, irrespective of their moral and spiritual state, and hence they conclude that anything painful and upsetting (illness, accident, injury, loss of job, the suffering of a loved one) indicates either that God's wisdom, or power, or both, have broken down. or that God, after all, does not exist.  But this idea of God's intention is a complete mistake: God's wisdom is not, and never was, pledged to keep a fallen world happy, or to make ungodliness comfortable (italics added)."

Do you ever wonder why God does / allows certain things?  Ever wonder why He does NOT do what we want... in our time?  The key from above is "we cannot recognize God's wisdom unless we know the end for which he is working."  We must learn to ask, "what is God's goal in this situation?  Likely it is to teach us something... maybe patience... maybe we have forgotten genuine faith involves not seeing.  If we can see __________ it really is not faith.  Perhaps we have allowed our faith that God is God to become slack and HE is helping us grow stronger in that area.  In all things we can know He leads us into situations and areas that will make us more like Christ.  Are we looking at our circumstances with an eye to that, or are we too consumed with ease and pleasure that growing in Christ-likeness is not on our radar?

"we cannot recognize God's wisdom unless we know the end for which he is working."