obedience / Suffering

Perfect through Suffering

Hebrews 2.10 claims Jesus, God as man, was made perfect through what he suffered.image

When we think of God suffering we think of the cross upon which He was crucified as the sacrifice for our sins, the payment God the Father required in order to pardon all who love God from their disobedience toward Him.

No doubt the greatest suffering occurred at the separation of God the Father from God the Son when the sins of humanity were all transferred to the perfect One. A mystery difficult for us to understand. (more…)

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April 27, 2015
Christian Living / Suffering

Created to be Good

Ecclesiastes 7:29 records God created mankind upright, but they have gone in search of many imagesschemes.

The answer to the question about why evil exists in the world always gets pushed back upon God as the culprit. The logic goes that if God were good and loving and all-powerful, He wouldn’t allow bad things to happen to good people.

The Bible portrays a different villain to the age old question; humanity. God made people good, because He is good, and since He made us in His image, male and female, we too were created good like Him (just without all the power). (more…)

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April 20, 2015
Christian Living / Suffering

Suffering as Jesus did

2 Corinthians 1.5 promises just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfortimage abounds through Christ.

We are promised abundant sufferings of Christ. The word ‘of’ is the key to understanding what the Apostle is promising those who believe.

Jesus suffered the shame and humiliation of Creation not honoring Him as God, Lord and Creator of all. Instead, all of creation rejected Him, some spat upon Him while others struck Him with their fists. Many cursed Him and a few crucified Him.

Though He was God He did not demand His honor and rights as God but instead took the role of a servant and humbled Himself to the point of death, even death as a criminal upon the cross. (more…)

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March 2, 2015
Christian Living / Suffering

Trouble is the Norm

Exodus 8.23 declares ‘I will make a distinction between my people and your people.’images

Pharaoh needed a great deal of encouragement before he would release his slave labor. This encouragement came through plagues that nearly destroyed everything and everyone in Egypt.

The first three plagues were suffered by both Egyptians and Israelites while the final plagues were only suffered by the Egyptians in order for them to understand that the God of the Hebrews was able to distinguish between those who are His and those who are not.

This cycle of both receiving the same difficulty and being sheilded from these difficulties will continue until that day when God separates for all eternity those who love Jesus from those who wanted nothing to do with Jesus. (more…)

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February 25, 2015
Christian Living / heaven / Suffering

The Sovereignty of God

Job 1.22 observes Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing.image

Job had just lost his business and his children but still he didn’t blame God for his tragedies. Instead he proclaimed that we come into the world naked and we leave the same but God is always to be praised.

Far easier said than done by the rest of us.

Everyone believes in the sovereignty of God, His ability to do anything He wants any way He wants any time He wants. This is our universal definition of God. (more…)

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February 3, 2015
Christian Living / Suffering

Feeling Forsaken

Matthew 27:46 About three o’clock, Jesus shouted, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”image

Have you ever felt forsaken by God? Most of us have. If so, we are in good company.

The Son of God, Himself God, somehow in the mystery of the Trinity, was also forsaken by the Father, Who is God. We accept Jesus being forsaken for we understand it was the process by which He took upon Himself all of our sins, all of the sins of humanity from and for all time, so that we could be forgiven for all time for all the evil we have ever done.

God, the perfect One, was forsaken so that the imperfect could be reconciled to the Father. If God was forsaken should we not also at least feel the same way on occasion?

TV Christianity promotes a God loves you and wants to bless you no matter what image of God but that is not the reality the Bible portrays. All of the great saints in the Bible suffered at various times. (more…)

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October 27, 2014