When everything in your life falls apart, you lot may wonder if God punishes people by taking away relationships, causing pain, or fifty-fifty taking the life of a person or pet you loved with all your eye.

Yous're not alone if you're request, "Is God punishing me for something I did?" People accept felt that way long before Job in the Bible wondered the aforementioned matter. Feeling like you're existence punished by God is normal for two reasons: 1) life is filled with difficult losses, terrible tragedies, and dry stretches of boredom and loneliness; and 2) you are human, which means you lot screw up. You make mistakes, hurt others, fail to live up to your own standards, and permit people downwards.

It's perfectly natural to ask "why is God punishing me?" when you're grieving, hurt, abandoned or lonely. Information technology's particularly normal to believe God is punishing you if you accidentally or deliberately injure others — especially if you lot can't remember the past without feeling aback or guilty. Merely just because your feelings are normal doesn't mean they're right!

Your feelings of beingness punished by God are existent and painful, but feelings are non reliable indicators of the truth. You are experiencing hard losses, painful emotions, terrible situations, low and loneliness because you're a normal homo in a broken world. God is not out to get you.

What to Remember When You Feel Like God Punishes You lot

Your feelings are normal, but not accurate. You feel like God is punishing you lot but that is but how you feel. God loves you and is watching over you. He is assuasive you to experience hurting and suffering — only it'south not because God is punishing you. Your pain and suffering is just a result of life in this earth.

i. Think that it's not about you

My church building taught me that my actions controlled what God did or did not allow to happen to me. That is a false, wrong, erroneous belief! Maybe in Quondam Testament days God wanted to be part of people's daily lives, but Jesus' life in the New Testament wiped out God'south "need" to punish people for infractions or only being alive.

Your mistakes, failures, crimes and harmful deportment are part of everyone's human nature. You are no better or worse than anyone else. We're all skilful and bad, strong and weak, wise and foolish.

Is God Punishing You for Something You Did?

ii. Notice your thoughts and actions

If you recollect God is punishing you because you lot did something wrong or bad, recall that your actions have consequences that bring pain. Your body, heed, and spirit are affected by your skilful and bad choices. Sometimes what feels similar God's penalty is simply part of being a normal human being who made a bad choice and now feels the sting of a guilty censor.

Or, perhaps you're dealing with an emotional or physical illness.

Here'southward an example of someone experiencing depression – not God's punishment. "I'm going through a real bad time in my life," says David on How Practice Yous Trust God Afterward Losing Someone Y'all Beloved? "Nothing is going right, I'chiliad ever deplorable and depressed. I do pray and read the Bible every now then. I was only wondering if God was punishing me for annihilation I had washed lately or my previous life?"

iii. Start talking to God

What practice you retrieve God is punishing you for? Go out a pen and paper, and make a listing of all the bad things you've done. Mistakes, failures, flaws, crimes, sins and weaknesses. So, talk to God — in writing — virtually each i. Take at to the lowest degree 30 minutes; tell God how you feel well-nigh each bad thing you've done. Be honest and real. Remember that y'all can rip this paper to shreds or burn down information technology when you lot're done.

You might fifty-fifty memorize or write Psalm 103:11-14 on your paper: "For every bit high as the heavens are to a higher place the globe, so great is his faithful love toward those who fear him. As far as the eastward is from the west, and so far has he removed our transgressions from us. As a begetter has pity on his children, so the Lord has pity on those who fear him. For he knows what we are made of, remembering that nosotros are dust."

God wants good things for you – fifty-fifty though your life isn't perfect or painfree. A hard life or terrible loss is just part of existence homo! Life is hurting. Choosing to believe in a proficient God or benevolent Universe makes life more endurable…even blithesome and peaceful.

While it's normal to think God is punishing you considering your life isn't going peachy — or considering yous did bad things — it's not true. Your feelings exercise non modify who God is. God created you and He loves y'all deeply. God sent His son Jesus Christ to earth, who died then yous wouldn't have to continue the laws and brand the sacrifices the Israelites did in Leviticus and the Old Attestation. God as well sent the Holy Spirit, who is always working on your behalf.

Share your thoughts below. Talk to people who feel the same mode. Know that you lot are not lone – not now, and not ever.

You might be interested in How to Get Through a Season of Spiritual Emptiness.

*