What God's Will isn't

I was reading the Genesis Worship blog for Woodbury Lutheran Church and came across a fascinating question posed anonymously in response to a message they did on God's will a week ago.

A dialogue developed between two individuals with selected excerpts below.

I struggle with the words "Thy will be done"...But oftentimes when something bad happens, an unexpected death and cancer. Even when Hurricane Katrina hit or the Tsunami, people claim that it's "God's Will."...How do you explain to your teenage son that it was God's will that their friend was killed in a car accident? I don't believe it was God's will she died.

So what is Thy will be done?
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So do you think that spiritual maturity allows a person to surrender more completely to God's will particularly during the trials and tests of life?

Is there anything else besides good and evil? Is something always good or something evil?
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It's easy when things go right in our lives to say it is God's will. But if something goes wrong, is that God's will?
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This discussion really made me think. It made me think of how cliche and unloving we as Christians can be towards those hurting. The discussion did not go that way, but the questions seem posed from a heart that has been wounded by that kind of carelessness in the past. This is what I added at the end.

God has promised that we will suffer if we follow him. This is why it says we must take up our cross and follow him, and that if the world hated him, it will really hate us. Yet not everything that happens in this world has moral weight. Remember that Christ debunked the idea that a tower fell and crushed a group of men because they were any worse sinners than others who remained living. It was just tragic.

The world we live in is broken. And as the person above stated, the enemy of God wants to cause harm to both believers and non believers alike.

Yet in the midst of that we know what the will of God is. He wants that none of us should perish but that we should be redeemed by the blood of Christ. So those things that happen can be used to further God's will (if they lead anyone closer to Him) or they can be used to deceive us and draw us away (as the enemy would have it). To some extent it is our choice to respond to suffering with faith, or discouragement.

It should be the Christian's mission to encourage, and shore up the faith of those hurting so that their response can draw them closer.

I do agree with the first person who had some misgivings with how we use "God's will" God's will is going to be accomplished in this world. I believe he can accomplish it through tragedy even if he is not the cause of that tragedy. I have the same compliant with the way that Christians toss around the word "hope" We say "I hope it doesn't rain today," but that is the world's kind of hope.

Our hope is with certain confidence.

It is in the return of our Lord Jesus Christ in the last day. It is guaranteed as sure as the sun rising tomorrow morning.

In that hope we can respond to suffering with faith not only to draw ourselves closer to God, but to encourage others who are hurting more than we are. As Paul said, we can comfort them with the comfort that we first received from God. And that is also why we suffer, so that we can serve those who are suffering through the comfort we have received.