Uncommon Faith

Since I wrote about suffering the other day and I know what a popular topic it really is, I thought I might offer a good reason why God uses suffering for His eternal purposes.

Since the summary of the Ten Commandments is to love God and love people then we should find great encouragement here.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort which we ourselves are comforted by God.     2 Corinthians 1:3-4

Let’s see if we can follow this.

God comforts us in our affliction.

The purpose of this comfort is so that we can comfort others in their affliction.

God provides an example in the way He comforted us.

Matthew Henry comments on this passage:

He is able to bind up the broken-hearted, to heal the most painful wounds, and also to give hope and joy under the heaviest sorrows.  The favors God bestows on us, are not only to make us cheerful, but also that we may be useful to others.  He sends comforts enough to support such as simply trust in and serve him.

Trials in life are inevitable.  We all face them and as a Christian, we have the opportunity to face them knowing that God is using them for a three-fold purpose.  Our good, the benefit of others and most importantly for His glory.

If you’ve ever been able to comfort another because you’ve walked through the same type of a trial previously there is nothing more rewarding.  In this God also gives us a wonderful sense of purpose in fulfilling the call to Christian ministry through suffering.

Go forward today knowing that your suffering is making you more like your Savior.

Kevin

Is it possible for me to encourage you today?

Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing. 1 Thessalonians 5:11

I’d really like to do that if possible.  I’m not sure how, perhaps you can message me, or call me if we are friends.

I don’t want to be an encourager in a Joel Osteen sort of a way where I tell you that God has great blessings in store for you.  Because I don’t know that’s necessarily true in the “mammon” sense of a blessing.

But what I do know is that if you are a believer in Jesus Christ you have every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places and that is better than anything I could ever offer you that is temporary.

But in this life, we need people to help us sometimes.  To guide us on the path.  To be a listening ear or on occasion a kick in the butt.  Without trying to be too sappy, which I’m not really a “sappy” guy, I do wish to offer opportunities to pray for you if I can.

If you ever needed to talk I’m always willing to listen.

Hey, I like coffee…  let me know if we can grab a cup and hang out.

In this dog-eat-dog world let’s find some space for kindness and compassion.  That is a Christian virtue after all.  It doesn’t always have to be setting you straight on your bad theology.

Anyway, I’ll stop there, hopefully, you got my point.

Kevin

 

I’m a complainer sometimes. More than I want to be actually, but less than I once was. I think that’s good. But yet it’s so easy to complain.

We always want it better.

If it’s too cold I wish it was warmer, too hot, then I want it cooler. Too humid, I wish I was in New Mexico.

Where is the balance?

We’ve just experienced the coldest day EVER where I live and had record snow fall for the month of January. I remember when we moved to Iowa in 1979. It was an epic winter. And by all measures we surpassed it this year.

Don’t we have some right to complain? Seems we should.

But just think about what is good…  It was -33 degrees the other night and I was comfortably sleeping in my bed and the thermostat was set at 71 and it stayed 71 through the whole night.  I had a hot meal that evening sitting with my beautiful family.  I read a book, I put the “littles” to bed and  told them to get back to bed at least 3 or 4 or 20 times.  What could be better?  Oh and I failed to mention I haven’t seen a mosquito in months.

Ah yes…  we are a miserable lot sometimes.

I think about the hundreds, thousands and millions of blessings I’ve received in my life.  It’s far better than I deserve and I would have never really anticipated any of this.  A wife that has stuck by me for nearly 28 years, 4 amazing children, a beautiful church home that has lovingly embraced us when we never expected it.  And I could go on and on and on…

And dare I not mention salvation to the chief of sinners?

My complaints are nothing but acts of selfishness and in reality why would I ever complain?  I don’t know…

O LORD, in your strength the king rejoices, and in your salvation how greatly he exults!

You have given him his heart’s desire and have not withheld the request of his lip.  Selah

For you meet him with rich blessings; you set a crown of fine gold upon his head.

He asked life of you; you gave it to him, length of days forever and ever. 

His glory is great through your salvation; splendor and majesty you bestow on him.

For you make him most blessed forever, you make him glad with the joy of your presence.

For the king trusts in the LORD, and through the steadfast love of the Most High he shall not be moved.  – Psalm 21:1-7

 

May the Lord gives us a great appreciation today for the simple things we overlook, but most importantly to the One who provides all things.

Kevin

 

In C.S. Lewis’s masterful book The Problem of Pain, he describes the doctrine of Hell as “not tolerable” and “no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than this, if it lay in my power.”  While I agree on so many levels it also forces us to ask hard questions about God’s purposes we don’t always understand.  Lewis recognizes that not all will be saved and to which he assigns a free-will nature to the creature.

I veer away from Lewis on this point in the way he means it.  I believe he fully assigns the creature the full liberty to “choose” or “not choose” God.  However look at the internal struggle Lewis has as to the creature’s ability.

If the happiness of a creature lies in self-surrender, no one can make that surrender but himself (though many can help him to make it) and he may refuse.  I would pay any price to be able to say truthfully ‘All will be saved.’  But my reason retorts ‘Without their will, or with it?’  If I say ‘Without their will’ I at once perceive a contradiction; how can the supreme voluntary act of self-surrender be involuntary?  If I say ‘With their will,’ my reason replies ‘How if they will not give in?’

Ah, so here-in lies the issue.  How does the creature surrender?  What do we know?  We know that man has no ability in himself to save himself and he has no ability to choose God (Romans 3:10-18).  He is dead spiritually without the ability to revive himself (Ephesians 2:1).  Man is a slave to sin and while he does have the ability to make choices his will is ensnared and captivated by what he is enslaved, which is his love of sin (John 8:34).

Therefore, left to himself, man will never decide to follow Jesus even though this is a catchy little tune I sang at a church I was visiting once.  There must be a force that acts upon the creature.  This is where the electing purposes of God enter the scene and while I’m not writing about God’s election today, it is an important doctrine to work through at some point in the Christian journey.

What do you do with a rebellious creature that desires self.

to think of this bad man’s perdition not as a sentence imposed on him but as the mere fact of being what he is.  The characteristic of lost souls is ‘their rejection of everything that is not simply themselves’.

Death removes this last contact.  He has his wish–to lie wholly in the self and to make the best of what he finds there.  And what he finds there is Hell.

While I truly hate that anyone would ever perish eternally in Hell I cannot shy away from this truth and neither can you if you are to speak the truth in love to your neighbor.  The objections are common and mostly predictable.  “Why would a loving God send anyone to Hell?”  Well, that is a good question, but have you ever considered what is a just God to do with guilty criminals?

Look at how Lewis deals with this objection.

In the long run, the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of Hell, is itself a question:  ‘What are you asking God to do?’  To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help?  But He has done so, on Calvary.  To forgive them?  They will not be forgiven.  To leave them alone?  Alas, I am afraid that is what He does.

This is really what lies at the heart of the issue.  You can be a Calvinist an Arminian or anything in between and at the bottom of the discussion is that every man will make a decision about Christ.  Hell is simply the reality of what they truly desire, outside of God’s regenerating work on the heart of man it is what we all desire.

But God being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ– by grace you have been saved– Ephesians 2:4-5

 

Kevin

The Old Testament can be perplexing to most people and even to Christians that have studied the Bible.  It’s a complex work of narrative, poetry, and symbolism that sometimes makes us scratch our heads and wonder what this means.  I recently listened to a podcast by Wrath & Grace called “Redemption is R Rated”.  I highly recommend this if you’ve never listened or thought through some of the implications of a “sanitary” Bible and the raw and gritty truths of what Scripture teaches us.

This post wants to focus on the narrative of a particular story about a king named Jehu.  It was going well for Jehu, he was taking care of business, so to speak, and tearing down the idols of Baal and apparently, he had honorable intentions.

He was a clever guy and he gathered all the worshipers and servants of the false god and gathered them up to destroy them.  This was God’s design to purify His people.  These accounts can be sensitive to our modern ears but that’s for another day.

He was zealous for the work of God.  Or so it seemed…

And the Lord said to Jehu, “Because you have done well in carrying out what is right in my eyes, and have done to the house of Ahab according to all that was in my heart, your sons of the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel.” But Jehu was not careful to walk in the law of the Lord, the God of Israel, with all his heart. He did not turn from the sins of Jeroboam, which he made Israel to sin. 2 Kings 10:30-31

Commentor A.L. Gordon remarks:

For what is here recorded of Jehu, we may draw another valuable lesson.  We see a man zealous in the cause of religion, pursuing the enemies of God, and made the instrument of fulfilling upon them his righteous purposes.  But how manifest in all his doings is the influence of a self-seeking, an ostentatious, and a worldly spirit, and how great reason is there for believing that, while accomplishing the designs of God, he himself would yet be a castaway!

What a tragedy.  Jehu had a great opportunity to fulfill God’s plan and to set himself up as a great king but yet the trappings of the world pulled him away.  We can also see that God was faithful to Jehu’s progeny.  Isn’t that interesting?  Because of Jehu’s obedience in destroying the worshipers of Baal, the Lord blessed his family but yet the true affections of Jehu’s heart were not drawn to the Lord.

Perhaps we can apply this to our own lives and also to those around us in our religious circles and communities.  We should examine the lives of those that are in leadership to see that they are holding to a pattern of sound leadership and not straying from the path of true devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ.  Oh, what a fearful thing for those that don’t.

Kevin