The last 12 years of my life causes me to question a higher power.
Ping
“”Where were You, God?”
I asked the same question when I prayed before both elections that Klownie the Kenyan won’t be elected...
Never liked the story of Job.God sounds like a smart alek,Where were you when I made the world?Who are you to question me?And replacing his children with more children?Sorry,apology not accepted.All God wanted to do was win a bet with the devil.Is that all we are in the end?Gambling chips in Gods poker game?
God is still there even in the pain and hardship. Man is a fallen creation, and with sin has come a sinful people. Lets not get into a non biblical dualism that God and Satan exist side by side dueling for mankind.
Disease, sickness, murder, corrupt government do exist but to blame God is tough.
Look at the current governmental Administration - deceit, lies, cheating and fraud were not known by many Americans. Now the truth comes out.
cancer comes about because the body’s normal responses going awry.
But sometimes the best thing is not to question God. Because God is still in charge.
remember the poem Footprints in the Sand - written by Maria Fish-Powers whom husband carrying her around in her times of ill health.
Our human nature would prefer not to have to digest these truths...
....we would prefer to see God as only benevolent, if not always benign toward us.
Yet God's perfections include all of His attributes. His judgment and discipline--- even Divine wrath-- remain just as perfect as holy love and mercy, and the grace, freely given, that sees us through each day as we pray and trust Him.
We find gain and suffer loss in our short time upon the earth-- but God never makes a mistake.
We have to try and keep in mind:
(1) God remains Sovereign over life and death...
(2) God's working definitions of life and death are beyond our own self-imposed limitations-- and even our complete understanding.
(3) The Kingdom of God that Jesus announced and exemplified for our Christian life, service and ministry has its own matrix of truth-- some call them spiritual laws -- the parables are illustration of these principles.
(4) The more we align ourselves with God's plans-- and avoid the seductions and schemes of the world culture all around us--the "safer" we remain.-- And our children as well when we pray for them and raise them up in the knowledge and admonition of God.
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OK... long enough...
Hope this helps... God bless.
Beautifully written.
Job had a character that he couldn’t chamge no matter the circumstances
I think many people have a different notion of where God is. This short video may help explain what Christians believe.
Funny you wrote about Job, that's the book I was just reading. Personally, I thank obama for motivating a return to my seeker's ways. He may have indirectly saved me by screwing things up so badly.
I posted the following on the thread about famous atheist/former atheist Antony Flew, but it might be better posted here.
As for evidence, you cite a lot of the most recent science, yet you remark that your discovery of the Divine did not come through "experiments and equations," but rather, "through an understanding of the structures they unveil and map."
Yep, this has been my path as well. In trying to understand the physical world and the rules by which it operates, I was lead to the Designer who built it and wrote the operating system.
The last book I read, "Heaven is For Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of His Trip to Heaven and Back" and current book I'm reading, "Heaven is Real, But So is Hell" have given me the answers I've been looking for to prove the truth of their titles.
And, both have more than lived up to their titles. After all I've learned through study and experience, I am 100% convinced of the reality of Heaven, Hell and the wonders and the consequences laid out in the Bible.
It's absolutely real. And we are almost out of time.
Flew is lucky to have found the truth before it was too late. I found way more than I wanted to know about what happens to atheists, and everyone else who turns away, by reading "My Descent into Death: A Second Chance at Life".
Parts of Howard Storm's experience still shake me when I think about them. I think that at some level I know his experience was real and awaits me, too. It waits for all of us who take that path.
What I read in Vassula Rydén's book tells me that we really don't want to experience the consequences our behavior has earned for us.
I've been wondering when it would hit His fan and apparently we won't have long to wait. We've pushed all of His buttons and have just about used up our Grace period to return to Him and His Mercy.
Next comes His Justice...did I mention how very, very unhappy He is with us? Time is running out...
Someone else wrote exactly on the same subject you did. Have you read anything by a guy named Job?
Why do the good suffer is an old problem never satisfactorily solved. Logically, God is a different order of being about whom analogies to human thought, behaviors and feelings are not really valid.
God isn not about circumstances.
He is about how you react to circumstance.
For best results glorify God in all circumstances.
God is not Santa claus
Job was never given a reason. Only a foolish man questions a God who can create the universe. Honest questions MAY get an answer. Questions that assume we have the right to judge God will not. At least, not an answer that the questioner will like.
God wastes NOTHING in our lives. Growing to trust him in all things is a huge part of that. I've heard it said that when we look at our life it is like looking at a tapestry from the underneath. The threads go in all different ways, making no sense, no pattern. But from the top - God's view - it ALL makes perfect sense and we see every thread has a purpose in that magnificent tapestry. We will finally learn:
But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:4-7)
This pertains to Theodicy, my proposals being that God could have,
1. made us (and angels) with no moral sense and or deprived us from the moral ability to respond to or choose good [morally insensible].
2. granted us free moral agency, but never have given us anything to choose between [negation of moral choices].
3. provided moral revelation and influences but always have moved us to do good, and never have allowed us to choose evil (such as make believing in God and choosing good so utterly compelling — like God appearing daily and doing miracles on demand, and preventing any seeming evidence to the contrary so that no man could attempt excuses [effective negation of any freedom to choose].
4. allowed us to do evil, but immediately reversed any effects [negation of moral consequences].
5. allowed us to do bad, but restricted us to a place where it would harm no one but ourselves [restriction of moral consequences].
6. allowed us to choose between good and evil, and to affect others by it, but not ultimately reward or punish us accordingly [negation of eternal moral consequences].
7. given us the ability to choose, and alternatives to chose from, and to face and overcome evil or be overcome by it, with the ability to effect others and things by our choices, and to exercise some reward or punishment in this life for morality, and ultimately reward or punishment us accordingly [pure justice].
8. in accordance with the above, except have manifested Himself in the flesh, and by Him to provide man a means of escaping the ultimate retribution of Divine justice, and instead receive unmerited eternal favor, at God’s own expense and credit, appropriated by a repentant obedient faith, in addition to the loss or gaining of certain rewards based on one’s quality of work as a child of God. And conversely, eternal punish to varying degrees those whose response to God’s revelation manifested they want evil, while making the evil that man does to work for the good of those who want good, and who thus love God, who is good [justice maintained while mercy and grace given].
God gives us a test while we are on earth.
One of the translations of the Our Father says:
Give us this day our daily bread,
And forgive us our sins
As we forgive those who sin against us.
And do not put us to the test,
But deliver us from the evil one.
This is the way the Our Father used to be said — with the mention of Satan in it — it got watered down, sadly, and hence, we do not pay attention to putting Satan out of our life.
May God grant you peace and understanding as you search for the truth.
God creates circumstances in our lives for many and complex reasons. Though He will lead us through the valley of darkness, He is always walking with us.
We collectively kicked God out of our lives, our communities, our government and our country.