Trusting the Goodness of God

Trusting the goodness of God is one of the great challenges in life. In scripture Peter felt fear and faltered.

Much focus on faltering in preaching is on Peter, but all the disciples faltered to a degree. Often we try to place ourselves higher than the apostles.

They had doubts and faltered at times. Trusting God is hard because life is hard.

Trusting God is an element of faith that is not normal for fallen people. God is on our side.

Being honest about our shortcomings allows us to grow. If we struggle at times to trust God we can take comfort that God knows our nature.

God calls those with doubts and struggles into the fellowship and comfort of eternal fellowship with himself.

Appearance

Often in life it is easy to be discouraged because others have their lives together. The reality is that we as people almost always present the best perspective of ourselves but know the realities of our life that others do not.

You see each person presents the best front for themselves and hides what is less pleasant. This is why often our initial impression of others can be quite off.

We are often discouraged because others have their lives together and we do not. You see since we often only see the best side of others we do not know the reality of things.

Life is difficult and comparison is not helpful. You see God has not placed the same challenges in each person's life. We all face unique things in life.

We should live ideally day by day resting in God's grace. Our faithfulness to God is all that matters. It does not matter how our works or life or faith compares to others. It is often not even possible for us to know.

The only question is what God would have us do today out of love for him. How will we live out the love of God in the world today.

Good in Life's Repetition

Often it is easy to feel bogged down in the necessary repetition of tasks in life.

I heard a person mention this once and then say God created the sun to do the repeated task of coming up each day and how that's beautiful. It's at least an example of how repetition of a task is not bad, or how we're very grateful when others preform these daily tasks.

These repeated tasks or needs allow us to help others. Every single day we have a chance to help others by the daily, repeated tasks we do each day. We certainly know how to do them because we do them each day, so it makes it really easy to help others.

When we eat and sleep, we gain energy that may help others. When we cook, we may likely create a way to enjoy the gift of food with others.

When we go to work and find we do a similar thing every single day, we are helping the community that receives the product we help produce and we also have a chance to really help our coworkers in their work and feel loved by truly trying to do work well. We may be building trust by delivering what we promise the same time each week.

God wants us to love him and love our neighbor, and in loving our neighbor we honor him. Repeated tasks give us chances to honor him. And as we've noticed at times when we give to or help others, we sometimes have a sense of happiness or fulfillment when we do it.

Seasons of Change

As much as we may love routine or how things are in our life or plans now, change seems to always sneak into our lives. People move, new technologies change the way tasks are done, jobs responsibilities or opportunities change, and many other things.

There are times in life when there is very little change, and other times when it seems like change happens way more than we want for months on end.

It's at times of unexpected change that faith is of great help to us. We often don't know why things are changing, but we know that God has a good plan for us. We know that he will give us the strength and will love us still at the times when we feel weak.

Whether it's a time of change in your life or not, now is a good time to soak in the meaning of the Bible, of what Christ's work means and how God has a good plan for his children and will be with them. That will help prepare for times of transition but also helps in times of transitions.

Often transition takes up large amounts of time and thought, and having already really learned about God and our relation to him can be in the back of our mind or there in quick moments in between tasks, and is a comfort to us.

The more we study and truly learn God's Word, the more we'll feel a confidence that God will always love us and allow things to happen for our overall good.

This reminds me that God never changes. However much we feel life around us is shifting and changing, we know that God is still the same God he was yesterday. And if we truly know God, we know that is a great thing.

Two Commands

Often in life the commandments of God seem to rub against each other a bit. It is often hard to know what to do at times in life. It is why the bible always calls us to wisdom. Wisdom will show us the way when life becomes difficult.

For example sometimes tensions arise between keeping confidences of things others have said to us and keeping relationships with nosy people. You know you cannot break confidence and yet you cannot confront the nosy people asking inappropriate questions because they will not understand.

There is a delicate balance at times maintaining a balanced view of the law in certain situations. Much wisdom, thought, and prayer is required.

In a biblical example David, when he was on the run, ate bread that was only permitted to be eaten by the priests. He ate what he should not eat in general and did what was right.

Is the law in conflict? No. The bible is quite helpful in that it gives us levels of wisdom. You see there is much specific guidance and some of the specifics can come into tension in situations in life. That is why the bible gives overarching principles.

The overarching principles are that we are to love God with our whole heart and love our neighbor as ourselves. You see the bible summarizes our direction easily for us when life becomes difficult.

The bible spells out the details to aid us to learn. But when we need wisdom because of the stickiness of life we should first pray, but also fall back to the overarching principle of biblical ethics of love. If we truthfully act in love after prayer and careful thought we will not be far off.

Truth and Convenience

At times truth is inconvenient. We find that truth can make us go out of our way or force us to do things we do not wish to do.

We often like to have things our way. But truth is not dependant on our personal preference. We often act as if truth is based upon what we like. This is not totally wrong as the golden rule exists upon the principle of doing to others what you would like done to yourself.

But often we find that the truth of things and what we like are in tension. The tension may be major or minor but often the tension needs to exist by accepting that what we like and what is true are not in agreement.

Often when we accept this we find that our mind comes to see why the truth found in scripture is correct. We see things from a limited perspective and through a cultural lens. We do not see the big picture.

We are often too close to the problems of life to adequately understand reality. We often make inferences from examples in life which do not follow.

It is easy from our limited perspective to not grasp the ultimate significance of things. We live in the moment and often cannot see what will happen past tomorrow.

Often we question the wisdom of God based on what we see today. We of course lack the eternal perspective of God who sees everything in our lives from start to finish and how our lives weave in and out of the lives of others.

Sometimes we do not like truth because we forget that not everything is about us. We forget that sometimes it is better to serve than to be served. Sometimes it is better if others have it their way and we do not get our way but we usually lack the perspective to understand this.

We Never Get Past Faith

The Christian life begins with faith in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Often we think now we have mastered the basics of the faith now we will move into the deeper substance.

But you see we are very forgetful and the basics of the Christian faith are everything. We do not start the Christian life by faith and continue by works. We start by faith and must continue by faith at every moment.

There is never a time when a Christian can move past the basics. We are weak. But when we are weak in Christ we are strong. If we feel we are strong we deceive ourselves and are weak.

You see all strength is found in God alone. In our weakness we can rest in grace. We were saved by grace and live each moment by grace.

If we do not see this we are blind to the depth of the law. The law is so deep and our weakness of heart so strong we are blind if we do not realize that we need grace each day.

Infinite grace flows from God. It is grace and focusing on the goodness of God by which we grow in sanctification. That is why often teaching on law and how to live well has no impact.

You see we usually know right and wrong very well and it does us little good. It is by looking to God in love that we are changed to be who we were always meant to be.

Faith is not simply Intellectual Assent

Faith Is Not Simply Intellectual Assent Faith is not simply intellectual assent. Faith involves accepting the claims of Jesus intellectually but it is far deeper. You see there are many things we accept in life which have no affect on us.

Many pieces of information we learn have no affect on us. We believe they are true but they make no difference on our life. You see many high school students ask in classes what practical value the information has. Usually the high school students are simply missing the value of the information presented, but the fact is true there can be information learned which has no affect on one's life.

If our acceptance of Christianity has no affect on our life then something is profoundly wrong. The Christian faith should have a profound affect on our life.

Of course it is common for sincere Christians to doubt God's love for them. A person who is concerned if God loves them usually is a child of God. It is usually a sign of a weak faith or a strong faith which has gone through a difficult time.

Usually the sort of intellectual assent which is not faith does not care about Christianity. It accepts the claims of Christianity and moves on unchanged. It does not care that there is no evidence of change in their life.

True faith has an appreciation for what God has done. It is active and transforms the person. It reaches out into the world to live out its faith day by day.

Hallow Religion

There is a great hollowness in many churches. You see a theology of righteousness has become very negative.

Being different than the world in many cases is a list of things not to do, with prayer added on as the activity to do.

You see this is such a thin religion. Nothing is required for righteousness except not sinning.

Ultimately religion in its best state is very active. It does and wishes to do.

You see Jesus is the model for Christian living and his life is a life of active doing. He is often criticized for his doing because he dares to act when those with a negative theology believe he should not act.

It allows sin to be sin and failure to act to be sin. And it rests completely on grace knowing day by day we sin.

Resting completely on grace allows and does not hinders action. Our righteousness is perfect and complete in Jesus which frees us to live.

Hard Times

Often in life hard times come and go. There are many in the church who assume that those who suffer hard times have a lack of faith or have done something wrong.

You see no matter how much the bible insists on the point that many great people of faith have suffered greatly of no fault of their own the church still falls into this error.

The list of those who suffered through no fault of their own include: Moses, Job, Daniel, Joseph, David, and many of the prophets. None of them were perfect and some of them made great errors. But all of them suffered unjustly at many times.

You see the bible often disconnects the situations people are in from their actions. Sometimes the situations people are in are a result of their actions and sometimes not.

You see it works for the rich too. Many of the rich are rich through no good actions of their own. Maybe they are skilled or maybe lucky, but it shows nothings of a true spiritual nature. Also poverty or suffering shows nothing of a spiritual nature.

The call of scripture is always to look past circumstances and judge truly. Men judge by what they see instantly: status, wealth, prestige, etc. But scripture calls us to see what is hidden and see the potentiality of all people as sons and daughters in eternal fellowship with God.

Listening

The bible always encourages us to be quick to listen and slow to speak. The reality of life is that our pride causes us to wish to speak and not listen.

We cannot be of edification if we do not listen. Even if we know more than those we speak with we cannot edify by speaking.

I have found often when I have had problems people are quick to give advice without listening to what I have to say. You see they wasted my time and their time by not listening before speaking. You see their advice was worthless because it was so general I could have found it on a thousand web pages and had already seen similar advice on many.

Maybe they could have been of use if they first spent a few moments listening. They might have had something helpful to say if they spent a few moments listening to my situation instead of spending five minutes saying vague generalities which do not apply.

You see speaking with an expert on a topic is not necessarily of use if you have a question if they will not take time to listen to your question. This is how it is often in life with many issues. We all speak so much that no progress is made because we have never listened to other's issue.

A related issue is trying to have too many friends. There are those who try to juggle fifty relationships and do none of the relationships well. They are friends with so many people they cannot keep any of the details of their friend's life straight.

You see relationships take time. There is a thing as having too many friends. The issue is that friendships take time because they are based on knowledge. We must listen and learn to be truly good friends.

You cannot really listen effectively to the lives of fifty friends. I personally would rather have two to three really close friends than fifty friends whose lives I cannot keep straight.

I find at times there is a loneliness of being with people you have spent so much time interacting with that exceeds that of being completely alone. I have never felt so alone as being around people who I have spent years trying to share my life with and I know massive amounts of things about them, but they cannot keep the smallest facts about me straight.

The reality is that these people were too busy to really try to have a relationship with me. I wish they had accepted the fact and not gone out of their way to pretend they cared.

Life, Death, and Paradise

"The impression of the decisive contrast between life and death is often still so strong in our life that we have but little eye for the light which Christ's message radiates, and this is true also in regards to the transition from death to life." G. C. Berkouwer

Death is in the secular world the ultimate enemy. You can read of modern computer scientists and others hoping to escape death by in some what surviving or preserving their body to have their psyche uploaded into a computer.

In Christianity of course for those with faith death is merely a gateway to be with Jesus. To the sinner who repented on the cross Jesus said, "Today you will be with me in paradise."

You see if we see with perfect faith death is not the enemy for the Christian but merely the beginning of a new chapter of peace in the presence of God.

The sadness exists in death of course that our work is done, but it is mixed with joy. It is truly difficult to see the bible's perspective at times as our faith is weak.

But God's grace is always with us. He loved us while we were still his enemies and he knows our frame.

Direction in Life

We all yearn for knowing the direction to take our lives.  Some of us know, some of us don't know, and some of us think we know and don't.

One thing about not knowing the direction we should take in life is that it is typical.  We see many of the great figures of the bible completely lost for direction.

Often many around us who are very sure of the direction in which they will take their lives end up being wrong.  Life is such that often many of the things we believe will happen don't and many of the things we don't think will happen do.

God has a plan for our lives.  This is true but most people who say it often miss the fact that God's plan may look very strange.

We see a lot of people who appear to be blown hopelessly off course who are likely on God's track and many people who look on course who are completely off track.

You see we don't see many of the details from a distance.  Often there is a great fakeness in the way things are presented.  We can really only know our story and maybe some of the story of a few close friends.

It is often discouraging because many people paint a story of their lives which is untrue.  They are successful with great happiness or so it seems.

Appearance is not always the case.  Success sometimes comes at great cost and some "success" can be built on sand that will slide away.

Always as we walk through life we live out our faith day by day.  Living each day through faith is what we can do.

We will often not know the direction to take in life and that is fine.  Some people may criticise us for lack of direction but they show their ignorance.

Having lack of direction is not abnormal.  If one does not know the way to take it is not abnormal, and it displays a lack of wisdom in people who feel that we must understand our direction.

In a way there is nothing so off track as "knowing" one's direction when one is firmly heading down the wrong path.  If we pretend to know our direction when we don't we often internalize the error and this is a flaw which a great many people live with every day.

Living by Faith

Living by faith requires constant thought. It is not that everything must always be rethought but we cannot live the Christian life in a meaningful way as a set of formulas.

You see the bible's constant call to wisdom is because wisdom is constantly needed in life. There is a great variety of situations in life many of which have many unique characteristics.

You see many business men in church who would not be satisfied with a cookie cutter solution to the problems in their business, but cookie cutter solutions to problems in the area of faith is not a problem to them.

We need to always attempt to live the Christian life in a thoughtful way. If we think we have figured out religion we haven't.

You see God is much larger than we are and the problems in the world are much harder to solve than we wish to think.

If we think we know the answers to the issues in life we are wrong. Because we have too much faith in ourselves. Humility to actually admit we do not have all the answers and frequently have very few answers is the only possible path toward really living the Christian life well.

Meandering Nature of Life

Life often doesn't make sense from our perspective. We are too close to see what God is doing in the world.

Often all of the features of life look out of whack like a broken vase on the floor. In the end there is more to things than we see.

God promises he is working all things for our good. Often life does not seem so.

It is comforting to see the great men of faith in the Old Testament express their confusion toward the nature of life. You see David on the run confused.

You see many prophets and great men of God hopelessly confused on the journey. Often in their moment of triumph they still have no idea what is going on or why things are happening.

The comfort to us is we do not need to worry if we do not see the path or nothing makes sense. To feel confused and bewildered by life does not imply we have not acted faithfully or that we are in the wrong in some sense because our life makes no sense and a Christian brother’s life seems to make sense.

Happiness in Life

Happiness is something which is truly worth having in life. Some thinkers have noted that all men seek happiness and this seems true.

The great difficulty is what brings happiness. The answers are many at times. This or that will bring happiness.

Strangely is always this item or that achievement which will finalize happiness. But always something is lacking.

Lewis notes in his writings that this lack exists because the lack was meant to be filled by God. God is a fullness of which can overflow to fill our lack.

It is interesting that it is always noted by people that God is in some sense against our happiness. When from the beginning of scripture in the chapter of Genesis God lays down rules to protect man.

Man was happy but then he decided that he knew more than God and he was unhappy. It is the same way today people do not like God’s way because it seems to exclude their happiness.

So men reject God and then they are often unhappy. This is not absolute, but I always find when I am far from God a sense of lack is always very close behind me.

When I am near to God there is always peace. The world likes to think that people could not universally like the same things.

The reality is people do universally like the same things overall just the things tend to be bad. This is often used as evidence against God that God tells mankind to do thinks that man does not like.

Of course the bible simply places the picture differently man does not like God’s ideas because man is dead in sin and in rebellion against God.

God of Covenants

The God of the bible is a God who freely enters into Covenants. A covenant is an agreement between two persons or multiple persons.

The reality is the are at least 5 major covenants the Christian God has entered into with man. The Christian God is often portrayed as a God who does not wish to help men.

This angry God has very little footing in the bible. It is true that God does have anger toward sin, but he has spent a large amount of time speaking to man about how the issues can be resolved.

The final covenant was of course the Father's only son Jesus (himself fully God - there is only one Christian God, but this God consists in 3 persons) entering the world to deal with the issue at great cost to himself.

The reality is that Jesus' teaching is not of much importance in comparison to his life and his death.

The life and the death of Jesus is the ultimate Christian hope, not the beautiful teachings he taught.

Life Unknown Length

There is a lot of us who say tomorrow we will get right with God. For many years I thought that I would simply push off dealing with certain issues I had about faith.

The reality of it is it is a great foolishness. A lot of people say the end of times are pretty far off.

The reality is that may or may not be true. The end of each of us may or may not be far off.

Another reality is that the decisions that are delayed become harder and hard to make. You rarely see people converted or made right before God late in their lives.

The 11th our conversion is a true experience, but it is uncommon. I believe the reality is that it become psychologically harder to accept God the longer we have rebelled against him.

Of course this is only psychological, not actual, but conversion is a psychological event where a man grasps the true of God. It is a supernatural event for sure, but truly psychological as well.

Humility, no grounds to Boast

The nature of grace is that it free. God expects nothing and asks for nothing in return.

The reality of grace is that it is a gift. The nature of a gift is that it is given freely with no conditions of reciprocity.

The nature of grace is such that we cannot and it is not good for us to try to repay God.

A lot of theologies fear making grace so free in that it will lead to a life of debauchery in their opinion. The reality is that a true grace from God comes with the power of God to live a changed life.

Only a counterfeit grace upon receiving it would wish to continue a life of sin. Of course surely we sin as Christians and fall frequently, but the nature of it is that it pains us and is not the orientation of our life.

Two Commands and Their Implications

Two commands and their implications:

Love the lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul and love your neighbor as yourself are two central commands in the bible.  Jesus as the one who must fulfill the law perfectly on our behalf fulfilled both of these.  The interesting thing about the first command is that ALL our love is commanded from God and yet more is still required.  This must mean in fact that loving God with all our heart mind and soul is not in contradiction with loving ourselves and our neighbor.  There must be a type of love that not only places love in our neighbor but also is in fullness a love of God.  If this is true one may well expect the enjoyment of a good game of hockey in heaven.  We may take delight in it while at the same time placing our full love on God.  It would seem unreasonable to assume that if we can have compatible love with humans that we cannot have it with other things.  In fact we would be forced to say that Jesus had no love for anything but God and man if we said that.  But clearly God delighted in his creation before man came so clearly we may love anything in creation and still fully love God.  (I am not saying that we can fulfill this now but it would be possible were it not for sin)  The implications of this would be that loving the Lord with all our heart in heaven need not mean that we may love nothing else in heaven.  Heaven, contrary to some views would not be a place of constant worship of God.  It would be in a sense in that all activities would become worship but it implies that there will be worship and climbing mountains and enjoying sunsets that all place our full enjoyment on God.  If this doesn’t sound possible to you, you should consider if our Lord and savior Jesus Christ has not already fulfilled it.  It would seem he must have.  He had a love that was for man and yet gave all his love to God thus fulfilling the whole of the law.  Jesus is one in will with the father so when the father declared his delight over his creation it is Jesus as well who delighted in it. (And God doesn’t change (And unlike the philosophical giants would like us to think that is a VERY good thing))  So Jesus on earth delighted in his fellow humans (he is fully human and fully God) and in creation all the while giving all his love to God.  If these presuppositions and logic have truth to them there will be great Hockey games, epic D&D adventures (well I'm not positive about that one as I don't know how much fun fighting evil in a world where there is no evil is (but at least in that there will be great stories and thus roleplaying systems)), and stunningly deep Go games in heaven all of which are enjoyed while God is given all the love.