ob is probably one of the best examples of someone who knew God as a loving God, despite hurt, pain, illness, affliction, loss, and tragedy. Even when those around Job, criticized him, and accused God of bestowing this great punishment on Job, Job never lost faith in Christ. Job is probably one of the best examples of someone who knew God as a loving God, despite hurt, pain, illness, affliction, loss, and tragedy. Even when those around Job, criticized him, and accused God of bestowing this great punishment on Job, Job never lost faith in Christ. When reading the book Job, one needs to be careful of misunderstanding the true words of wisdom, and the words of foolish men. Its quoted in Job, You talk like a foolish woman. Should we accept only good things from the hand of God and never anything bad?” Job 2:10 The amazing thing about this statement is that God did NOT choose the specifics of Jobs misery, Satan did. Job endured all of this with a faithful heart, and a love for God. He became mad, but He accepted that God knew what was best. He did not lose faith, even though God chose not to reveal the reasons for this. God never once tried explaining to Job why he went through everything he did, yet Job accepted his plight. He was faithful, because he trusted that God loved him and knew more than he did. He understood that God is a sovereign God. God is in control. He only allowed what would be the best for the world as a whole. Who are we to judge God? We are mere humans in this vast world, we have no way of knowing Gods ultimate plan, except through what he has placed in His Word. We should all be like Job and learn that just because things are going bad, does not mean that God is punishing us, nor should we believe that God is doing the harm upon us. He is merely allowing the pain in the first place. When reading the book Job, one needs to be careful of misunderstanding the true words of wisdom, and the words of foolish men. Its quoted in Job, You talk like a foolish woman. Should we accept only good things from the hand of God and never anything bad?” Job 2:10 The amazing thing about this statement is that God did NOT choose the specifics of Jobs misery, Satan did. Job endured all of this with a faithful heart, and a love for God. He became mad, but He accepted that God knew what was best. He did not lose faith, even though God chose not to reveal the reasons for this. God never once tried explaining to Job why he went through everything he did, yet Job accepted his plight. He was faithful, because he trusted that God loved him and knew more than he did. He understood that God is a sovereign God. God is in control. He only allowed what would be the best for the world as a whole. Who are we to judge God? We are mere humans in this vast world, we have no way of knowing Gods ultimate plan, except through what he has placed in His Word. We should all be like Job and learn that just because things are going bad, does not mean that God is punishing us, nor should we believe that God is doing the harm upon us. He is merely allowing the pain in the first place. most of us are not born with faith like Jobs. Satan knew that Job had a tremendous amount of faith, but Satan felt he could break down Jobs faith through tragedy. It did not work. So we are left to ask questions like How could a loving God allow rape, murder, mutilation, starvation? If He allows this, is he truly loving? The short answer is yes. He is loving. We may not understand why something has happened, but he uses all things for His good. He gave us freewill, because he wanted to feel the joy of us coming to Him on our own. When we do that, He gets to experience our tremendous love for Him and our willingness to come to Him out of faith, love and devotion. Although, He takes a risk in giving us free will. For one, He also gets hurt because many of us make very unwise, harmful decisions that hurt God, and that hurt our fellow man. God knew this was a risk of allowing us to have free will. All people will hurt others in some way, for we are all sinners. Some of us are more severe, others less severe. To the rapist, murderer, etc., dont worry, they will not go unpunished. Either punished in this world or the next. And yes, God allows the rapist to rape, the murderer to murder, and the liar to lie. Just because God allows it to happen, does not mean that he does not hurt with us as we go through these problems. His pain is tremendous, as he watches us hurt. He tries to comfort us, but we have to be willing to accept his comfort. He uses others, He uses circumstances, He uses a vast many things, but often we reject the things He sends. Some may argue that if God wanted to give us free will, couldnt He have made it so we didnt hurt one another. When God gave us free will, He gave us free will in everything. If He limited what we could do so we couldnt hurt others, then it wouldnt be free will. He either can give us free will, or limit how we can affect others. He cant do both. If God chose to not allow others to kill each other or not allow people to do many atrocities, then we would not truly have free will. Gods Will Is Too Hard For Us to Understand Truth is, we are given free will, but what about the other things like severe deadly weather, or diseases. Why would God allow these. He can control these things. First, you must understand that God placed things in motion. By not allowing a hurricane, there are other things on Earth that would not do well. For instance, if God chose not to allow any more hurricanes, this might have a severe effect on the Earths ability to regulate its temperature, or ability to redistribute rainfall as God intended. There are so many things that each of these things do, that would affect our world catastrophically if God were to stop. Think about Forest Fires. Did you know that in forests, often people will actually set controlled forest fires to burn off certain parts of the forest. The reason for this is because they understand the necessity of forest fires. When an area is burnt down, it allows for the forest to grow healthier. Without these necessary fires the wilderness would become overrun with certain vegetation destroying others. The fires allow an equilibrium to be reached in the forest. Before there were men to set these fires, God knew that it was important that fires occur naturally in the woods on occasion; therefore, He allowed them to happen, despite the great damage that can occur. Some Things We Will Never Understand Another argument may be that He is all powerful, so why cant he just make weather good, not bad. Or why cant he make our bodies fully healthy without the disease. I believe you must accept that there are some things we will never understand. We, mere mortals, are unable to understand God to His full extent. Lee Strobel quoted a story told by someone else about a bear. He started by telling the story from the bears perspective: The bear was walking along and got caught in a trap. The bear was wailing and tugging, the more he tugged the worse his hand hurt. Then all of the sudden, the bear sees a hunter with a gun! The bear growls and swipes at him. He becomes madder and madder as this man gets close. Then all of the sudden the hunters lifts his rifle and shoots the gun at the bar. The bear jumps as he hears the bang, moments before he feels tremendous pain. His vision becomes black. Horrible from the bears perspective right? Well, lets look at it from the hunters perspective. The man hears a big wailing in the woods behind his house. When he sees that the wailing is coming from a bear stuck in a trap, he runs inside his house to grab his gun. He gets closer and closer to the bear, to make sure that the aim is perfect, until he knows he can shoot the bear in just the right spot. Then bang. He waits a moment as the bear slowly drifts asleep. Once he knows the bear is asleep, he pushes the bears foot into the trap further, until the trap releases. He dresses the wound, then pulls the dart from the bears side. The one that came out of his gun. He leaves the bear lying, so that way when the bear awakes he will be able to go back home. When the bear awakes, his paw is sore, but will eventually heal just fine. The hunter wasnt out to hurt the bear, he was out to help. But the bear does not know enough about humans in order to understand the human. Just like we dont understand God enough to know why He does things. We are not God, and bears are not humans. Sometimes God has to allow pain in order to help us. What about the People Who Have Never Heard of God? Then what about this business of being saved? What about the people who have never heard of Jesus Christ? How can they be saved? How could a loving God make it impossible for some men to make it to Heaven? Should ignorance be a damning problem? The bible states that God has revealed himself to each and every one of us. They may have never heard of God by the name we have, but He reveals Himself no matter where we are. I am cautious to word it this way, because I dont want you to believe that I think all people who have some sort of faith will go to heaven. The bottom line is, we need to recognize that we are sinners, we need to be forgiven for those transgressions, and we need to come to a point where we realize we need help outside of ourselves in order to be forgiven. Although someone has never heard of Jesus Christ, they may come to this realization. God is revealing Himself to them, by showing them they need to reach out to something beyond themselves to attain that forgiveness. Unfortunately, many of us are too stubborn to get to that point. We want to believe that we are good enough on merits alone. Of course we are not, we are human. We need Jesus and we need to be forgiven. God reveals Himself to everyone, its our choice to be with Him or not. Those who do not get to hear the gospel, they can still be saved by listening to God when He speaks to them. By realizing they are sinners, they need to be forgiven, and they need Gods help. So do others who choose not to believe go to Hell? Well, yes. If you choose not to be with God here on Earth, turn your back on Him, be too prideful to admit that you need God, then when you die, you will be separated from God in death. That is essentially what Hell is. Hell is a complete separation from God, and that is what we are choosing when we choose not to believe that we are sinners who need to be forgiven and that Jesus blood can do that for us. The bottom line is that the gospel will prevail regardless if people accept it or not. It is often hard for a believer to hear opposition to the gospel because it is the most important truth we will ever hear. We dont know why He does the things He does, but He does things all for His glory. We cannot see the grand scheme of life from an all powerful perspective, because we are not all powerful, all-knowing, or any of the such. God is, and we need to trust Him.
Posted on: Mon, 20 Jan 2014 05:55:54 +0000
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