As we’ve already discussed, once you doubt God’s goodness, you can’t possibly avoid doubting His love for you, His care of you, and His willingness to guide and help you. Once all of these things get thrown into question, you will be forced to ask yourself: “Just why am I following God?” Are you just in this for the goodies and the future perks? Is that all Christianity means to you? The end times are going to be a time of major sifting for the Church. We’ve always been taught to believe that it will be the pressure of external persecution which will divide us. But no, the pressure to cut and run will come from within: from God Himself challenging you about why you are claiming to be one of His followers. Are you just in it for the perks? What if there are no perks? Then what? What if it turns out that God really is some shady Character who you can’t count on for anything? What does this change? What doesn’t this change? He’s still the One who created you. Are you going to start lipping off to the One who can rip your molecules apart simply because you don’t personally approve of the way He operates?

Submission is the bedrock of your whole relationship with God. And if you really think about it, submitting to God is the only wise choice in any situation. If God is good, then we can add all kinds of happy assurances to your beliefs. But if God is not good, He is still God, and that fact alone makes refusing to submit to Him beyond foolish. It is now, while things are still relatively calm, that you need to give serious thought to this submission issue. Ask the Holy Spirit to show you the wise answer to this question: “What should my motivation for submitting to God be?”