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The God I have come to know is a stark contrast to the God I hear
about from church pulpits and other Christian sources. We are led
to believe that He is puritanical, stern, and unbending. Many times
we hear passages from the Old Testement quoted to support dire
warnings of harsh punishment, lest we are good little puppets. But the God I know is only good and kind, gentle and loving. He is intensely concerned about each of us, beyond any measure of love that we can understand. Every hair on our heads is counted, every breath we take foreknown. What harsh judgements God is wont to make are not His preference, but rather the Divine actions which His Righteousness demands for human corruption. He takes extreme measures to avoid punishing even the most despotic among us. The things of eternity are not the trappings of this world, and the conditions which govern our lives are not what they appear to be if we are His children. A problem arises, however, in our inability to correctly interpret God's thoughts and actions. Our suffering, the problems we face, are inevitable factors in this life. Deliverance from our heavenly Father isn't necessarily the removal of our plight, but rather the innner strength to carry on in spite of it. But there is much more to His provision for us that merely the grit to contend with our woes. We are indeed delivered, but in eternal terms, with a supernatural happiness and contentment that defies human understanding. The purpose for our creation is to solve the Angelic Conflict, or the battle between good and evil, if you prefer, and this mission sends us forth onto a battlefield. There is no such thing as a tranquil life, in terms of daily circumstances. This existence is about strife and injustice, danger and privation. The greater our burdens, the greater is our involvement in the titanic struggle between the forces of light and darkness. It is a greivous mistake to misunderstand the objective of our mission, and an even greater one to expect from God the circumstances that we define as acceptable. Deliverance from our Father is not the cessation of hostilities, but the provision of a spiritual armor that cannot be penetrated by worldly powers. In this He is glorified, that we stand our ground and use the shield of faith to great effect. He does not leave us destitute, out on a limb as it were. We are supported by Divine logisitcs that so far exceed the pressures we face as to render them insignificant. But arriving at this spiritual plateau is no casual attainment. We are not catapulted onto this lofty plane at the moment of salvation, nor do we achieve it with superficial pronouncements of devotion to God. Once again, we are wont to define what God wants of us in human terms. We naturally suppose that God wants of us what we want from other people, smiles and platitudes that are impressive on the surface, but which have no substance, not in God's eyes. What God wants of us is as different from our views toward life as the frontiers of His kingdom are from this veil of tears. If we hope to serve Him as He wishes to be served, we must learn who He is, how He thinks, and what His priorities are. These principles are only derived from one source, His Word. It is for this purpose that He gave us The Mind of Christ, that we would understand Him, and thus come to realize what our mission is, and how we carry it out successfully. I think of time as a reflection of eternity, and like a relection in a mirror, we see the opposite of what's there. Hold up a newspaper before a mirror and what do you see? Go ahead! Try it! You see the same print, the same arrangement, but backward. But let's carry this analogy one step further...look at the reflection in the mirror with another mirror. We see the newspaper exactly as it actually appears. With the "naked eye", the unenlightened soul, we perceive of God in human terms, not as He actually is. But there is a mirror effect in the soul as we learn His Word, and we are able to understand the inscrutible truth of eternal life. In almost every venue, God's views are in sharp contrast to human ones. Without Bible doctrine in our souls we can't even understand Him. Just so, suffering is not a curse, but a blessing. In suffering God reveals His love, His power, His glory. The Bible says that in our helplessness His power is made operational. Our problems present a Divine opportunity to pour wonderful blessings into our lives, but without knowledge, we cannot possibly understand this principle. We are naked to pain when we are without truth. |