Category: Pride and selfishness

What has happened to our country?


In the past twelve years what has actually happened to our country? I don’t even recognize much of the United States anymore, at least the United States that I grew up in! We are in the process of creating a country that is exactly the kind that most people fled from to come to in the past two hundred years. I know about the slave ships that brought people here against their will and I truly do apologize for all of the past mistakes, sins, that our forefathers perpetrated but there is a limit to what we should be doing to our country. The damage that has been done is such that it cannot be undone by one President, it cannot be undone in the next century by any number of elected officials especially those who are corrupt like the ones in office now!

I realize that my blog is supposed to be about Christ and I do believe that the reason for this happening is due to the fact that God and prayer were taken out of schools and our educational system. Morality has been eroded away to the point that many people support the idea that we each have our own truth and our own morality. According to who?! If you don’t have your morality and truth anchored in the Word of God, then the individual person can make up exactly what they consider to be truth and morality for themselves! This will create a system of anarchy with no law and no responsibility for anything! Do you think that you can live in a country like that? Would you want to bring up a child in a country like that? I wouldn’t!

Our country needs a revival of faith in God, in morality, in each of our lives and if we don’t do this or decide that we don’t need it, then we will suffer the consequences. What that will be, I don’t know, but it will very likely be unpleasant. Please, think about this, pray about it, bring it up in your church if you attend one! If we allow our country to go down this path that it has already started on, then we will see what those consequences will be and I doubt that anyone will be having a good time.

 

Is non-belief (atheism) new?


Not really. It is something which has come of “age” recently in America and by recently I mean within the last forty years or so. It was not a popular viewpoint prior to the ’50’s, but I am sure that, like today, there were a few people that held that viewpoint. Many tried to have religion abolished during the so-called “monkey trials” in the early twentieth century, when the courts had to decide whether to teach creation or evolution to children.

Recently, they have erected a monument of sorts to atheism right alongside a monument of the Ten Commandments. In an attempt to make their point that, I suppose, we don’t need Christianity or religion.

The following quotation from Madalyn Murray O’Hair is carved into the side panel of the granite monument:

“An Atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. An atheist believes that deed must be done instead of prayer said. An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated.”

When an atheist says, “I believe,” it’s an admission that atheism is a religion. When they (atheists) admit that they believe in something, it proves that it is becoming a religion, at least to them. Of course, I just repeated the statement which came with this quote from the website below:

Read more: http://godfatherpolitics.com/11193/why-i-support-the-new-atheist-monument/#ixzz2W1pDw8zC

I, on the other hand, do NOT support this monument because it gives the atheist worldview legitimacy which is something that it doesn’t need. I know we are supposed to allow all viewpoints to be seen and heard because of the first amendment, but this movement doesn’t want to allow Christians to have that freedom anywhere! In schools in particular but also in the military and in our government as well, so are we supposed to just get out of the way and let them have their say. I will agree to getting out of their way, but my constitutional right to speak up empowers me to say what I want as well.

God, the Creator, gives us each our measure of grace to be on this planet and in the places where we are in order to do His will. Whether we choose to follow Him and do that is up to us, we are not forced to follow Him even if we have heard scripture being read or a prayer being said in school or in a public arena. Why should we have to cower whenever someone cries out that they don’t want to hear about Christ, but atheists never say a word about Islam or any other religion. It seems to center only on Christianity. Why is that? Have Christians gone around killing people because their message is not getting out to the world? Have Christians used suicide bombers to make a point about anything in relation to Jesus? None of this has happened because our religion is one that is tolerant of others. We don’t force anyone to convert to Christianity, so why are we treated as if we do?

I think it has to do with the facts of history and those of Truth. When the Truth is revealed to someone logically without coercion then they make up their own minds about what they believe and usually when that Truth is brought to them through the Bible, they realize that their belief…whatever it was, was leading them in the wrong direction. God’s Word is truth whether you want to believe it or not. The reason that I believe it is because, not only because I a Christian and a pastor, Satan believes it too! The enemy of all who believe in God knows that it is true and he agrees with atheists that nobody should be forced to listen to prayers or to hear the message of Jesus preached.

The problem with that belief is that it is one that leads to hell. Satan knows this but he is not going to help you. He only wants to get as many people to go down that road as possible, because those that do won’t belong to Jesus. Romans 6:23 says: “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

When you make a decision to come to Jesus and stop believing the lie that is sold on television and by other media outlets, that we are our own saviors, you will be on the path to Life. The road to destruction is wide and there are many who find it, don’t get on that road! Make sure that you are on the road to eternity, an eternity which is not full of pain and anguish because of decisions which were guided by the world. Don’t let anyone tell you that when you die, you just go away. God put an eternal soul inside each of us and when your earthly body dies, your soul goes to be in eternity. The eternity that you will go to is determined by your choices here, between your self and the world or whether you chose Jesus as your savior. Those are the only two choices that really matter because they affect your eternal destination. So, which one will you choose?

Pray like your life depends on it!


If you leave out the power of God that comes with fervent prayer that will not take no for an answer, none of your Bible study or church or choir practice or the church building will do you any good at all. By praying to God like your life depends on the outcome and you won’t take “No” for answer, your life can be immeasurably impacted by what He can and will do in your life!

Especially if you aren’t sure of your position in Christ, fervent prayer is what you need to do. Your life actually does depend on your prayer and how you approach God with it, your present life may not depend on it but your eternal life can be radically changed by what you pray for and how you pray!

For instance, consider how you would pray if your child were deathly ill or even your wife or husband were in such serious condition that nothing that modern medicine has will help. How would you pray then? If you haven’t given your heart and life to God and asked His forgiveness for your ignoring His grace toward you through Jesus Christ, then that is exactly how you should pray for yourself!

You can decide that you don’t want to believe that God would condemn you to hell for that, but it will have the same effect as not believing in gravity, it won’t go away because of your non-belief. Your life, especially your eternal life is in God’s hands but your fate in eternity is in yours. Believe or don’t, eternity is still ahead of you and the result and the consequences of your belief or lack of belief will be totally in your hands.

God loves you and never intended for you or any of us to be sent to hell. It was created specifically for Satan and those who have chosen to follow him by not believing in the saving power of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. This doesn’t mean that you have ever worshiped Satan, but by not giving your heart to Jesus you have put yourself in the same place, the same camp as Satan. Whether you believe that or not won’t change anything either. Your belief or disbelief won’t change anything unless your faith and belief is placed in Jesus. When you have done that, then your life really begins to matter because every word that you say, every action that you do can have a greater impact on those around you once Jesus is in your heart!

The grace and mercy that was imparted to each one of us on Calvary two thousand years ago is something that we can’t understand without Jesus. The love that the Father has for us is also something which we can’t comprehend, even with Jesus but we can get a taste of that love through Jesus’ presence in our lives.

So, what do we do with His presence in our lives once we have it? Jesus told us to “Go and tell the world the gospel, the good news of salvation that is available to all”. Granted, he didn’t say it in those exact phrases but that is what He meant for us to do with our salvation and the wonder of the grace that has been imparted to each of us. If you accept His grace and the salvation that it gives to you, then you are fortunate indeed, because the Creator of everything knew you from the beginning. He knows your name and everything that you do, whether you have given your life to Him or not, so why not make this relationship a two-way relationship? None of us can hide from God, Jonah found that out and many others have as well, especially me! God called me over twenty years ago and I heard Him, I just didn’t want to do what I felt He was calling me to do. So, I ignored Him for a while, like about eighteen years or so.

Then, when I heard Him again it was like He was saying “Can you hear Me now?”, “Are you ready now?” This time, I answered “Yes!” and I have been doing what He wanted me to do, to the best of my ability, ever since. I am not saying that my prayer life is better than yours or that I am more “righteous”, what I am saying about a calling from God is that we have to obey it, we need to obey it. Obedience is the one message that is echoed throughout the entirety of God’s Word, from the beginning to the end it is the one action that gets action in your life and the life of others because that is what God wants from us.

Just like parents when your child obeys you and it makes you happy and proud that they did what you asked of them, God feels the same way! Obedience to a calling from God will move you in directions that you never anticipated, maybe you don’t want to go in that direction, but if you obey the calling of God, it will work for your life and for His purpose.

The Lord is my Strength!


In Psalm 28:7 David writes: “The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and I am helped; therefore my heart greatly rejoices; and with my song I will praise him.” This verse was George Beverly Shea‘s “life verse” and it should be ours too!

The Lord does give us strength and He keeps us daily in His sight and in His grace. How else could we possibly be the people that God intends for us to be without Him? We cannot do it on our own, we must have the Lord with us every day, throughout the day. Our Lord and our God is the One Who is able to sustain us through all of our trials of life, regardless of what they may be.

In your walk through life, have you considered God? Have you trusted in Him and His grace? He is the only One that can save you from an eternity of torment which was not meant for you in the first place! God loves you and gave His only Son for your life and mine and the only way to come to the Father is through knowing and coming to know the Son, Jesus Christ!

The Father, our Creator, knew each of us before the foundation of the world and He wants us to know Him. Yet, we are just as stubborn and hard-headed as He said the children of Israel were in the wilderness. We turn our eyes toward things which don’t matter especially when we haven’t turned to Him. While we are still dead in our sins, we turn to money, power, greed, fame, or even to things which we own like cars or homes to bring us happiness. Sometimes people still do this even when they believe that they belong to Christ, but if your heart is not full of Him it will turn to stuff which doesn’t matter.

It is time for us to put our lives on the right path and follow the One that came to give us an example to strive for. We may not be able to attain it while we are yet on earth, but the striving for it will make an impression on those who are looking at us and living around us. Your life has meaning and it has so much more meaning when Christ is a part of it because when you are following Him, people can tell whether you say so or not. Your life and your imitation of Christ which reflects Him, shines through the darkest of days and everyone can see it, especially those that need to see Him.

I am trying to emulate Paul the apostle so that I strive to finish the race. I am stretching toward the prize and that prize is eternal life with Jesus. I pray that I will see many of you there too. Please give Jesus a chance in your life.

 

Consider God today


Have you considered Him today? Have you thought about God today? We have many reasons or excuses for not thinking about God in our daily lives, such as:

“I am too busy to bring Him into my thinking today”; “God doesn’t belong where I work, so why bother?”; “He doesn’t want to be with me, so I am going to leave Him out of my life until I am ready”; “God doesn’t care about me, so why should I care”.

These reasons or excuses for not letting God into your life are all wrong! He does care, He loves you whether you love Him or not! He does want to be involved in your life. These reasons are also selfish, because you may not feel worthy of having Him in your life. You may be feeling that you aren’t good enough, well guess what? God does care! He sent His Son to die for us and pay the penalty for our sins long before we were ever born!

Jesus did not think of Himself when God asked Him to come to earth and be the spotless Lamb of God! He just obeyed the Father and now we have the ability to come before God’s throne whenever we need to or want to and for whatever reason…or even no reason at all! If you have not given your heart and life to Jesus, please consider Him today! We are not guaranteed tomorrow so don’t think that you will always have time to make this decision.

Your life and mine matter to God! He doesn’t turn away from us, even while we are sinners. If we repent of our sinful ways and turn and seek Him, He will hear us. He already knows what we need, He is only waiting for us to acknowledge that we need Him! Yet, today, many people refuse to admit that they need God. How will you feel after you die and you are standing in front of Him and He asks you about your life and why you didn’t come to know Jesus, His Son? Denying His existence will not help you at all at that point, just as not believing in gravity won’t make it go away.

You should care about your eternal life because it is a fact, proven or not, because Jesus spoke of living saints (Moses, Jacob and Isaac) and told His disciples that God was the God of the living not the dead. Another reason you need to consider is that eternity is a lot longer than your lifetime on earth, which is more like a puff of smoke in comparison. Our Creator has given us all sorts of time to decide, we have the testimony of many who have come before us as well as the testimony of nature itself. As David wrote in the Psalms: “the heavens declare your handiwork”; we cannot refute this because the beauty is there to be seen, on earth as well as in the heavens!

That testimony doesn’t even need translation into any language, the beauty of the heavens and our earth itself declare the handiwork of God because of the perfection of the way everything works together. It doesn’t matter about the man-made theories that science has been clinging to for over a century, there still is no proof of evolutionary transition forms of any animal anywhere on the planet, so if you can’t prove it then it is only a theory and not fact!

I am not writing to debate or disprove evolution, all that I am writing for is to bring a message to you about giving your life to Christ, because eternity is a long, long time and I don’t want to be responsible for anyone missing it. Read God’s Word, pray about your life and what it might mean to you and to God if you gave your heart to Jesus. My life was made far more rewarding and fulfilling by asking Him into it and I have learned more from Him than I did in college and I am still learning every day. Give Jesus a real chance in your life, you won’t regret it at all!

Pentecost


Repentance is not a single event but rather a point of crisis along with a continuing relationship choice. Repentance is part of a Christian’s regular spiritual life and routine. When you repent of something, regardless of what it may be, you turn away from it and choose another, better path.

Acts 2:1 When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. 5 Now there were staying in Jerusalem God-fearing Jews from every nation under heaven. 6 When they heard this sound, a crowd came together in bewilderment, because each one heard them speaking in his own language. 7 Utterly amazed, they asked: “Are not all these men who are speaking Galileans? 8 Then how is it that each of us hears them in his own native language?
11 b, we hear them declaring the wonders of God in our own tongues!” 12 Amazed and perplexed, they asked one another, “What does this mean?”

Our lives in Christ are important to God, which is why He sent His Son to take the punishment for our sins and die on the cross so that we might be able to receive forgiveness through Jesus. The only requirement on our part..that we have to do is to repent and ask for the forgiveness that has been provided. Now, some might say that they don’t feel compelled to repent of anything in their life so why should they? In that instance, either you are not ready or it isn’t the time yet for your spirit to be called. Which doesn’t mean that you are not wanted by God, He is just waiting until the time, His time, is right. He alone knows when that may be, although you can still pray and ask Him into your life. You will not be refused.

God never will turn away a sinner who asks from their heart and truly repents of things that they know that they have done. It is not a one-time event in your life, just as changing the oil filter on your car isn’t a onetime maintenance item either. We are all sinners and we do it on a daily basis. Nobody is exempt from this fact, even Jesus was tempted but He didn’t sin. What can we do about those temptations? Are we able to control them and ourselves? In many instances, no we are not able to do this with our own strength. But God provided us with the same Spirit that was given to Peter and the disciples that day, which will enable us to resist temptation.

Many people think that He didn’t sin because He was God in the flesh, but it was because He yielded His will to God each and every day..every minute. This is what we are supposed to do, but many think that once they have given their life to Christ, they don’t have to do anything else. If you don’t do anything else, your life won’t really change at all from what it was before you accepted Christ.

Then you will be counted among the hypocrites because you didn’t allow the Holy Spirit which you received to really change your life. This is why there are so many who are not in church, they know the Truth, they may have accepted Christ but they have not followed through with Bible study, daily prayer asking for strength to get through the day, etc. The spiritual fire that some have and many do not and the reasons for the difference is found in that, follow through. The gospel could be preached simply by saying “Believe in Jesus who was sent to die for your sins and ask Him to come into your heart and cleanse you from your unrighteousness”. One sentence, but without prayer and study of scripture allowing you to get to know God, what will change in your life?

William Blake wrote a poem about Pentecost and a few lines from that poem read:

Unless the eye catch fire, God will not be seen.
Unless the ear catch fire, God will not be heard.
Unless the tongue catch fire, God will not be named.
Unless the Heart catch fire, God will not be loved.
Unless the mind catch fire, God will not be known.

We are to be on fire for our Lord because He came down to us. We are to be on fire for God because a part of Him resides within each person who has accepted Jesus as Savior. If we are not on fire for God, why not? Do you not realize that the Creator of the universe came to earth specifically for each person here? Not only here in this church building, but all people are the ones that He came for, whether they know Him or not at this moment or even whether they care that He loves them, he still came.

I have seen a book called “gods at war” and it is written by a pastor who teaches a study based on it. The problem is that there are no gods at war, there is only one God, all these others are inventions of men. These man-made gods cannot fight with the One True God. They have no power because they are man’s imaginings of the “god” that he wishes to be the true god.

Even many people who are in church do this. You may hear people say that “My god would never condemn someone to hell”; in fact, it is not God that condemns people to that place but we ourselves.

Getting back to the day of Pentecost, those who heard the sermon in their own language wondered what they must do when confronted with the truth of Jesus. During the Festival of Weeks, many Jews would come to Jerusalem because they were required to by their religion. All of those that Peter spoke to were from Rome, Crete, Turkey, what is modern day Iran and many other places. Peter answered them and said that they must repent of their ways and be baptized. We can do no less than this.

Are you content in your life? Are you satisfied that you are in a right relationship with our Father in heaven? Many people are and the truth of it will condemn them. They are like the Pharisees, they see no need to repent because their religion and their practice of it feels just fine. As time and our lives will show that one day every person will bow before the King of Kings and we will all be shown the truth of our life. What kind of truth will your life show you?

Mothers, we wouldn’t be without them


Hers is a job that can’t be ignored nor can she call in sick.

“Womanhood is a wonderful thing. In womankind we find the mothers of the race.There is no man so great, nor none sunk so low, but once he lay a helpless, innocent babe in a woman’s arms and was dependent on her love and care for his existence. It is woman who rocks the cradle of the world and holds the first affections of mankind. She possesses a power beyond that of a king on his throne.
…Womanhood stands for all that is pure and clean and noble. She who does not make the world better for having lived in it has failed to be all that a woman should be.”
― Mabel Hale, Beautiful Girlhood: A Timeless Guide for Christian Adolescence

Mom is the one person that no one can be without because it takes a mom to bring you into the world. Dad can’t do it alone, although he is part of the equation. Your mother is always important, because she is the one who is there to take care of you and if she isn’t then it is your grandmother. Regardless of which one it is, she is or has been a mother at some point.

No one in the world would be what they are today without a mother or grandmother, whether king or President. We all owe our lives to the mother who carried us and brought us into the world and then nurtured us into the people that we are. Prayerfully, she was leading us toward Christ because we all need to be pointed toward a goal  that will give us hope and He is our hope.

There are so many today who are supporting abortion and the decision behind it but children are gifts from God so why are they being aborted? Mostly because of choice and convenience from what I have read about in the news and what I hear from supporters of this. I am not coming down on abortion but has anyone considered how many children have been killed because of it? God considers a life in the womb as a human being because there is a command in the Old Testament which says: “When men strive together and hit a pregnant woman, so that her children come out, but there is no harm, the one who hit her shall surely be fined, as the woman’s husband shall impose on him, and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if there is harm, then you shall pay life for life, ” Exodus 21:22,23

These are the words of God’s law, not man’s. Women were created to help mankind (woman and man) to prosper, grow, and be companions to each other. Mothers are to be the nurturer, the one’s who give life and sustain it and help it to grow. We, meaning all of us are to be that way, not killing and murdering people the way the wars and persecutions in our world do! We are not supposed to be this way, we were created to be companions of God and to walk with Him in fellowship and a loving home is where this starts.

Give God a chance in your life, in your home and the rest of the blessings from God will follow.

 

What do you do when you can’t do anymore?


Do you give up? I have heard that many people do just that and its a shame. What about looking for something that you can do? When we get to a place where we don’t think we can do or say anymore about something, what do we do then? The thing that I do is..turn to God and ask Him to show me what to do! In today’s society, there are many people who don’t do that simply because they don’t believe in God, but what else is there to believe in? Man-made religions and beliefs did not create the universe. Religion doesn’t have a risen Savior that is present to be called upon.

The thing that makes Christianity different from religions that are all over the world is that our Savior died in order to bring us into a relationship with Him! Many other religions require you to “do something” in order to be worthy of a relationship with their “god”, while the God of the Hebrews is the only God! And He doesn’t require you to work your way into heaven because you can’t! We cannot do anything on our own that makes us good enough to be allowed into heaven. The only requirement that we have is to believe that Jesus died for us and took the punishment meant for us, accept it and then do the best we can, with Him as our guide, to go out and spread the news to others!

Whether the world accepts Him or not is not our problem, all that we have to do is tell them about Him! He will speak to their hearts and minds so that they will be convicted of their sins and turn to Him or they won’t, but they cannot be forced into it. The talents that God gives to each of us, whether we are Christians or not, were given to bring Him glory. Though, most of the time we use those talents for our glory and our personal gain, especially if it is a talent like singing or acting. The bottom line is that we are selfish.

We, all of us, think that we are the most important person in our world and to some extent that is true. But, being that self-centered does nothing to give us a positive image of ourselves unless we are being praised or we happen to be good enough that we get praise for our performances.

And yet, if we are not good enough we begin to believe that we aren’t good enough for anything or anyone. We get into a real pity party and get depressed and turn to many other ways to make us feel better, even if only for a little while. People turn to drugs, alcohol, sex, reality television, money, etc.; the list could go on and on forever. Even our jobs and our house or how much money we make or the kind of car that we drive can turn into or be used as a status symbol, which many people use them just that way.

But, what does that accomplish? Does your job help you in any way spiritually? Can your car solve problems at home, or can money fix your relationship with your children or with your spouse? We tend toward idolizing people and things in our society and we don’t realize that we have actually turned them into idols. These “things” cannot do anything for us. They cannot help, but they do get in the way of our perception and keep us blinded to the One who can help.

Jesus, by the love that the Father had for us, was sent to be the sacrifice that would take the punishment for us all, and He did! He paid the price of everyone’s sins so that we wouldn’t have to pay the price for our rebellion. All that we have to do is to believe in Him and His sacrifice and that we are His when we do. We cannot help Him to save us, because there is nothing that we can do that would be good enough. The only thing that sends you to hell is believing the lie that Satan puts in front of you, the one that says “I can do it on my own, I don’t need you!” The other lie that many people believe is that there is no hell or punishment for those who reject Jesus or even that there is no Satan who causes us to believe more in our own self than we do in the One who created us!

The grace of God is extended to each of us every day when we are able to get up and greet another day, yet many people don’t acknowledge it as such. They take each day for granted because they believe that they are guaranteed their time on earth, but we are not! We have the time that God gives us and that may end tonight, we may never see another sun rise on earth. But, when your eyes close in death you will rise to an eternal life afterward. Your enjoyment of that eternity hinges on your decision to accept Jesus as your Savior and ask forgiveness through Him or not. Your immortal body will be able to withstand the terrors and the punishment in hell and you will feel it forever or you will be rewarded with a life in heaven that is free from pain and suffering. The choice is yours to make, but it must be made before you die!

 

Murderers, killers and thieves


Our nation is in mourning because of the people who commit these acts in our cities every day. Yet some of them do it legally and no one says anything about it until something is discovered that gets people angry enough to do something about it. The murderers who use guns get attention in the media whether they kill one or more people, especially if it is a child. But what about the so-called “doctors” who perform abortions daily.

I realize that there are some who are actually board-certified physicians, but they are not gynecologists or if they are why would they be consenting to do these things. The answer boils down to MONEY! Some reports show that abortion doctors can make anywhere from $350 to upwards of one thousand dollars per “procedure”. Regardless of what you call it, in the eyes of God, it is murder.

In the title I referenced thieves and I mean that in the way of stealing life from someone who may have been important in the future. But we will never know for sure, because they were aborted before they had a chance to live! I know that I am speaking against abortion, but there are some that have been aborted that were just plain murder! These partial-birth abortions in particular are grievous because if the child were wanted, they could have lived.

God doesn’t take the murder of children lightly like we do in our society today. How much blood has been spilled and innocent lives taken because of the idol of “convenience” got in the way. Pride and greed and selfishness are all involved in this industry. Selfishness because of the money to be made and because it is “inconvenient” to have a child. Children are gifts from God, but many people treat them as if they are slaves or property or even pets!

Our lives and the lives of our families are not “things” to be used as bargaining chips. If the argument for abortion were just involving a so-called “clump of cells“, then why do we punish murderers in the prisons? We just happen to be living clumps of cells that can fight back and talk and defend ourselves, babies cannot! Why do we punish a criminal for two murders if he kills a pregnant woman and yet we define her child as a non-living clump of cells?

God creates each of us in the womb and He knows the person that we are destined to become. When we take that life, even before it draws its first breath, in God’s eye we have murdered that person. The people that we, as a society, have killed since abortion became legal is numbered in the millions.

What can we say to Atheists?


There are many things which are not right in our world. Many people die each day of starvation, disease, war, gunshots. anger, heart attacks, etc., the list goes on and on. The question in many people’s minds is this: “Why does God allow all of this suffering?”; “Why doesn’t He step in and fix everything that is wrong with the world?”.

There are many answers to these questions, most of which atheists and many other people really don’t want to accept. God allows this suffering because it is part of the human condition. We live in a world that “fell from grace” when Adam sinned in the Garden and the suffering is part of that fallen world. To answer the second question is very simple and easy: He will fix everything when He returns.

These answers are unacceptable to most in our world because they believe that God shouldn’t allow suffering. But, the suffering that we go through is only a shadow of what will be if we are unwilling to accept Jesus into our lives and hearts. The suffering that you will experience by being out of God’s presence for an eternity will be many magnitudes above the suffering that you or I would experience here on earth.

The suffering that Jesus experienced on the cross when His Father turned away from Him is exactly what we will experience, because we will know the presence and the love of God before being cast into hell. Knowing the love that He has for us, for even a brief time, will be painful to be separated from it.

During the crucifixion that Christ suffered to pay the penalty for each of us, Jesus did feel that separation and loss. Many people will say that He only felt it for a few hours so how could that have meant anything? The Son of God had never before been separated physically or spiritually from His Father. They had always been together from before time began until that moment on the cross, so an hour or even a minute’s time of separation would have been painful for both the Father and the Son. Yet, it had to be done because He was the only sacrifice pure enough to take care of the penalty for the sins of mankind.

The world that we live in is in a fallen state due to the actions of Adam and Eve. That fallen state and the “ruler” of this world, Satan, is the reason for the suffering and the other problems that happen everywhere. Of course, people add to the suffering because of our nature. The Bible says that our thoughts are continually toward evil and left to ourselves we will do what our nature and our thoughts dictate.

Trusting in God and accepting the sacrifice of Jesus for our sins, asking Him to forgive us and make each of us more like Him is the only way for us to break out of the sinful mold that we are born into. The mini-series that many watched during March has started a wave of people looking for answers and they are found in the Bible, not in stuff that we consume or in man-made religions which have no real answers to life in general.

Study and read the Bible, question the things that you find in it, learn about the One who can make you whole. Because without Him, we can do nothing that has a lasting value. The things that we do here in this life are only temporary, the service that we can do with His strength and through Him is eternal. Think about it.