Hello, 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 repeated question.

I skimmed through the questions of the week 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 does 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.

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, as Paul says in Romans 12, too,

...