My dad can beat up your dad

So often, as Christians, we seem to want to 'prove' God to those outside the church.  Sometimes this is done on the platform of academia / theology.  Other times, it's simply through sharing our experiences and showing how God has come through for us.  This is akin to playground antics.  "My dad can beat up your dad."  We're all proud of being God's children.  This is a good thing.  He created the entire universe and he loves US.  Pretty amazing.  We should feel special.  We want to show off how good He is to us and prove that he's the best dad around, trying to convince others to become adoptees.  This makes a good sales pitch when we have a shiny new toy to bring to school.  "My dad loves me so much he bought me this aweseome new thing!"  Or, we're proud of how rough and tough he is.  He gets us out of the messes we tangle ourselves in.  He's our rescuer.  We're proud of Him and want to show him off.  We have an easy time doing this when we feel special about what He's doing for us.

However, no kid is bragging to his friends how great his dad is because he's grounded, and he realizes that it's in his best interest, and so this makes his dad phenomenal.  Or, how wise his dad is for letting him learn from his mistakes the hard way, so he won't make them again.  We tend to complain about these instances, or we keep quiet about them, not wanting to show this side of Him to others...they might decide they don't want that kind of dad.
The point is that we aren't God.  We don't always understand what He has in mind for us.  The dangerous thing to do is to try to formulate how He's working or to attempt to understand how it will all work out.  God is sovereign and He does love us.  He knows what He's doing.  We oftentimes don't know what He's doing (or what we're doing).
I find that I get into the most trouble when I try to figure out how God is working on somebody else...or I get so focused on somebody else being in relation with God, that I forget about my position as God's son.
God wants us.  I don't personally believe that he regularly makes things happen or not happen.  He does, however, use life, as it happens, to teach us and bring us closer to Him.  I think that if we believe this and keep this mindset, we will do well to grow closer to Him as his children.  We should spend less time worrying about how God comes across to other people and more time focusing on what He wants to do with / teach us.  It's all His to begin with anyway.
"The earth is the LORD's, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it"  -Psalm 24:1