A Chosen Life

Questioning a Loving God

I was asked this question:

"Why would a loving God create people He knows will be destroyed? What is loving about that? Wouldn't it be better to not create them at all if He knows they're going to reject Him and go to hell?"

My response is that God is always loving and always just. We, however, are not. For us, fairness and justice are relative to us and to our way of thinking. But in fact, fairness and justice are relative to God, making them absolute and not bendable to our point of view or our feelings at the time.

It is God's will to create. We know this because that's what He does. It is also God's will that all should come to repentance. It is also God's will to grace each of us with our own wills. He gives us the freedom to choose life through Him or destruction without Him.

God is knowable and can be known personally but not completely. If we could know Him completely either He would not be God or we would be. His thoughts and motives are far beyond us. So there is much we do not understand and never will. What we do know is what He reveals to us. He does things we don't understand. When we don't understand Him, we most often react by doubting and questioning Him. We place ourselves above Him, telling Him that we know better than He does. This is the pride - the daddy of all sin - which got us into trouble in the first place. 

A large part of faith is believing God and trusting Him when we don't understand. He expects us to trust him without completely understanding what He does or why. Look at Joseph's life: Did the Lord ever provide him with an explanation for those 15 years of slavery and incarceration? Or did He ever answer Job's questions? No. What He did was to ask Job the question that ended all arguments: "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?"

I cannot move forward with my life and build my faith if I demand an explanation for everything.

God does His work where I cannot see it. What He does is not for or about me alone. He has a greater purpose in mind for me that is broader than my tiny sphere. He owes me no explanation for my existence. He chose to create me and that is all I need to know. He owes me nothing yet I owe Him everything because He created me and then gave up His life to redeem me from the consequences of my pride. 

Are we willing to trust Him with our lives even when we don't understand Him and even if He never explains Himself to us? Are we willing to live with unanswered questions?

You turn things upside down, as if the potter were thought to be like the clay! Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, "He did not make me"? Can the pot say of the potter, "He knows nothing"? Isaiah 29:16 (NIV)

"Woe to him who quarrels with his Maker, to him who is but a potsherd among the potsherds on the ground. Does the clay say to the potter, 'What are you making?' Does your work say, 'He has no hands'? Isaiah 45:9 (NIV)

Yet, O LORD, you are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand. Isaiah 64:8 (NIV)

Death and Life

I make far too many comparisons and valuations of myself based on worldly expectations and opinions. Things such as beauty, acceptability, power and success are what most of us measure ourselves by. I end up taking my identity and my worth from the opinion of others. Therefore I never measure up; I am always defeated.

Yet I belong to Christ, and we who belong to Christ are supposed to be influencing the world, not influenced by it. 

Since I have accepted the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and I call Him Lord, my life is no longer based in the world but in heaven, even though I am still here. I am technically "dead" to the things that won't last, like beauty (we all age and die), acceptability (make one wrong move and you're toast), power (there is always going to be someone stronger who will take me out) and success (this is always tenuous.) Yet tearing my thinking and affections away from all these is so difficult. It's not that there aren't good things in the world, but these things are not the sum or source of my life. It's not that I am to eschew all the material stuff, but I am not supposed to be pursuing it or worrying about it. I am to follow Christ, seeking His Kingdom and His righteousness. 

I don't know what my life will be, but the Lord does, and I must pursue Him to take hold of it. To pursue Him, I have to deny myself and identify with Him and take up my cross daily (note: the cross is a symbol of death and not simply a fashion statement). I am confident that my outcome is a good one.

 I'm realizing I haven't yet fully taken up my cross. If I have been crucified with Christ, I no longer live but Christ lives in me. Am I actually basing my life on that fact or am I continuing to live as the world dictates? 

Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Colossians 3:2-3 (NKJV)

And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. We who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it. Matthew 10:38-39 (NKJV)

In Adequacy

I feel so inadequate more often than not. I don't measure up. I feel stupid and even ashamed, wondering if I've fallen short in some responsibility or let someone down. 

Then I remember that this is not just a feeling, it's a reality. I am inadequate. 

But if I were adequate, what need would I have for the Lord? 

Then I remember this verse from Paul's letter to the Corinthian church:

But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. -2 Corinthians 12:9-11 (NIV)

Admitting that I am not up to the task allows God to step in and work through me. With that admission I need to stop feeling sorry for myself and move on.

Lost

At my small group Bible study last night we were discussing one of the most famous verses in the Bible: John 3:16. This verse is so well-known and so widely memorized that the rest of the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus is pretty much overlooked.

What stood out to me in the passage is where Jesus describes those who don't believe in the Son of God as being "condemned already". He's saying that no human being is good; no one is good enough. No one has what it takes to get out of jail. We like to think we're good. We say, "I'm a good person." The reality is that we're simply not, and we are all awaiting sentencing.

We're born condemned and we remain that way until we're born again.

So here's the question: Would we who are born again have more compassion for those who aren't if we referred to them as the "condemned" instead of the "lost"? 

"Most assuredly, I say to you, We speak what We know and testify what We have seen, and you do not receive Our witness. If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things?  No one has ascended to heaven but He who came down from heaven, the Son of Man who is in heaven.

"And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. 

“He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his deeds may be clearly seen, that they have been done in God.” John 3: 11-21 (NKJV)

Advice From the Middle of the Crap Pile

But I am poor and sorrowful;
Let Your salvation, O God, set me up on high.
I will praise the name of God with a song,
And will magnify Him with thanksgiving.
This also shall please the LORD better than an ox or bull,
Which has horns and hooves.
The humble shall see this and be glad;
And you who seek God, your hearts shall live.
For the LORD hears the poor,
And does not despise His prisoners.
-Psalm 69:29-33 (NKJV)

It goes against the grain for me, at least, to do much other than complain and wallow when things get bad. I'm not where I want to be. I seem to constantly in the wilderness waiting to get to the promised land. My life has not gone as I had expected. I'm disappointed and broken down. I'm so tired.

As I read this psalm this morning I was reminded that grousing about my circumstances doesn't help. This was not a new concept. I said, "Okay, so....what?" What was new to me was the understanding that simply not complaining was not enough. Instead, replace the complaint with praise.

Don't say nothing, say the right thing.

Rather than opening my mouth to complain, rather than not saying anything at all, I should be opening my mouth to praise God. It's easy to wait until I see things getting better. It's easy to wait until I feel like it. It's easy even to keep my mouth shut altogether. But praising God when I'm surrounded by crap, when all my buddies have abandoned me, when I'm sick or wounded, when I don't feel like it and even when I have no voice left is an act of faith.

Praising God in the middle of troubles is an act of worship and trust. When I praise I acknowledge Him for who He is and that He is bigger than my circumstances and that, no matter what happens to me, He is always God. Praising God pleases Him better than any other sacrifice (that would be the ox and the bull reference in the psalm). Praising God from the middle of my crap pile before circumstances improve is an example and witness to people around me. Remember Paul and Silas in the Philippian jail?

Then God reminded me of Habakkuk the prophet who looked around him and saw nothing good but determined to praise God anyway. Habakkuk 3:17-19

Praise may not lift us out of our circumstances but it does lift our hearts and our spirits. It pleases God; makes Him happy. It gets our focus going in the right direction and gives us the strength to persevere.

That's what God taught me this morning.

Praise God.