#978 How to Handle God’s Plan for Your Life
February 08, 2026Hello Dr. Craig to my surprise I became a Christian a few years ago and your work has greatly helped me but I still have some doubts I’m working through. I apologize if this is a repeat question I skimmed through the QOTWs and didn’t see it. I have a hard time being comforted by the idea of God’s plan. Most Christians I know seem to have this resolute belief that God’s plan is going to be great and will help them with finding the right person to marry or the right career etc. That idea makes me really uneasy. It seems to me that God’s plan may very well entail me getting run over by a bus tomorrow or something terrible like that and no doubt senseless tragedies will continue to occur throughout the world. In light of this I have a hard time trusting God with certain things because it’s not like they’re guaranteed to go well. I guess really what I’m asking is how to trust and be comforted by God’s plan even though it may involve so much suffering and disappointment. Thank you!
Stokes
United States
Dr. craig’s response
A
In my chapter “Failure” in my book Hard Questions, Real Answers I describe how I was personally forced to confront your question, Stokes, due to a disastrous and unexpected failure in my life. We were walking in God’s will and were being upheld by many others’ prayers, and yet I failed. As I struggled to understand how God could have led me into such a situation, I came to what was, for me, a radical, new understanding of God’s will, namely, that God’s will for your life may include failure and He may lead you into the pit of failure. So I agree with you that “God’s plan may very well entail me getting run over by a bus tomorrow or something terrible like that.” So, yes, God’s will for your life is “good, acceptable, and perfect” (Romans 12.2), but that does not mean that His plan for your life will be free of suffering and hardship.
But that’s not your real question, is it? The real question is, “how to trust and be comforted by God’s plan even though it may involve so much suffering and disappointment.” Here the answer is twofold:
(1) God providentially orders the world according to His perfect goodness and love to establish His kingdom. God’s desire is that no one should perish but that all should reach repentance (II Peter 3.9). Therefore we can trust Him to so order the world that, given human freedom, as many as is feasible will be saved and as few as is feasible will be lost. If through my suffering other people come to know God and find eternal happiness, then the price is well worth paying. In fact, in heaven someday, looking back, you will rejoice that God’s plan for your life included terrible suffering so that brothers and sisters might be saved. You will be like Christ in suffering for the sake of others. That is a tremendously comforting thought!
(2) God has things to teach you through suffering that you would never learn through success. When we go through suffering, we should not engage in vain speculations about why God allowed it to happen. God’s providential plan for the world is doubtless too complex for us to be able to discern such reasons. Rather we should ask, what can I learn from this? What is God teaching me through this? There are spiritual and moral lessons to be learned from suffering that can contribute to our sanctification and conformity to Christ’s character. So even if the reason for His permitting you to suffer was not for your own benefit but because it contributed to the overall good for the benefit of others, still we can profit personally from what God allows us to suffer.
- William Lane Craig