There is a lot of pain and suffering in this world, and sometimes it seems that God just sits back and watches and doesn't care. Why is that? I don't know if we're ever going to find an answer to that question while we're still alive, but I'd like to give my opinion.

Most people want to be able to have money to pay for their kids college, enough to pay bills and go on vacation once a year. They want to be happy and not have problems. They want to have good health. I'm no different than everyone else. Doesn't it make sense that God would want the same for us? I don't think He necessarily does, because He wants more than that for us!

Dr. Larry Crabb is a best-selling author, counselor and psychologist. He's written many popular books including "Inside Out", "Finding God", and "The Marriage Builder". I've read some of his books and liked them, though the ones I read were really deep and kind of hard to digest.

Recently, I discovered another book by Dr. Crabb called "Shattered Dreams - God's Unexpected Pathway to Joy". I started reading it and I realized it was different than the others I've read by him. It was actually much easier to read, and I could tell from the writing style that this book was intimately important to him, that he had really lived what he was writing here.

The premise of this book is that joy and happiness are two distinctly different things. Most of us believe that the most important thing that we can have is happiness. Plenty of money, a loving spouse and obedient kids, good health, a good job, a nice house, etc. The list could be quite long. But my belief is that this isn't necessarily what God wants for us.

The Bible says that God wants to give good things to his children, even more than we want to give good things to our children. So God obviously wants us to be happy, right? That could be true, and while He does want those things for us, if they get in the way of having relationship with Him then He'll take the relationship every time. That's where we will find true joy.

You see, when we achieve that point of supposed happiness, where we have the earthly things that we desire, sometimes we become content with that and don't seek God anymore. Or we might become so involved in hanging onto that happiness that it consumes all of our time, and keeps us from relationship with God. Therefore, God is willing to allow to experience some suffering to build that relationship. How we react to this pain is what determines whether we'll have joy or not. Most of us will do whatever is necessary to minimize the pain.

Larry Crabb tells us in "Shattered Dreams" that we need to experience that pain and not try to minimize it or turn away from it if we're going to experience the joy that God desires us to have, and that we really hunger for in our hearts. This is no fun, but the bottom line is that's it's the only path to experiencing true joy. After reading this book, I believe that this is why God allows pain and suffering and why bad things happen to good people.

Matt Hellstrom is a husband and dad to five beautiful adopted kids. Here are some tips for effective parenting skills that Matt and Julie have learned in the last 15 years. You can learn his feelings about why God allows suffering.