Even Our Faith

So we have come to know and to believe the love God has for us.  God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him -- 1 John 4:16

Bruce Charleton does a much better job of explaining something I think I touched on a couple of months back:

Think about our own earthly Father or Mother - as a child, if we believe they are good, we trust them; and we interpret their actions (observed and imputed) in that light - in the light of knowing that they love us.

We don't let any specific action, or their average of actions, or anything we read, or anything which 'other people' say, have any influence AT ALL on the knowledge of the fact that they love us.

So the mass of Christians do not assume the loving goodness of God, they de facto test it. For example, they test the gooodness of God by reading the Bible, or Church pronouncements. This is equivalent to a child starting each day agnostic as to the love of his parents, and weighing all their actions and statements about them to decide - day by day, moment by moment - whether his parents really do love him - or not.

God is Good -- all the time.  We can absolutely trust Him.  He is not "testing" us or setting us up over how we ask for something in prayer.  He is not going to give us something evil to teach us a lesson when we have asked for something good: 

What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent; or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?  If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him! (Luke 11:11-13)

I have told the story before of how my wife gave me a new KIng James Version Bible, and, when I began to read it, I was certain that the publisher had altered the text.  I actually went back and pulled out an older copy that I knew was "right" only to find the Bibles had not changed.  The reader had, because he had "come to believe".