I just listened to this talk about "pain" online - a Where Is God When Bad Things Happen? kind of thing. I found it through a blog that I look at. It is amazing and so insightful! How great it would be if we all had a little more insight into how to handle ourselves when terrible things happen in our own lives and in the lives of those that we love. There are no answers that make the pain go way, but there are ways to make a bit of sense of it all. This is totally worth a listen!
www.evfreefullerton.com/worship/sermon_encounter.html
Click on “Grace is Sweet!” from November 18, 2007.
Monday, December 10, 2007
"This Is Not What I Had Planned"
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Love the name of the afore mentioned sermon, "Sweet Grace". Lord knows we all need a good dose of grace on a daily basis, don't we? I'll have to look at the website you suggested. Speaking of bad things happening to good people; I got an email from a friend after another friend asked a very hard question at Lifegroup the other night. Her husband is an oncologist in Waco; not a believer, but a very compassion and kind man from what I understand. He had a young patient, a beautiful 24 year old woman, out-going and who loved life so much. He had thought she was going to make it; thought her luekemia was going into remission when things went haywire and she died suddenly. After he came home from the funeral he asked his wife (my sweet friend), "How can you love a God and ask Him to protect our daughters as they come and go from here to there and back again when He let a beautiful young woman like this die?" So hard to understand and none of us felt we had adequate answers that would satisfy this wounded man. we continue to pray for him; that he will soon find his way and come to know that a Holy and loving God has made a way for him in this fallen and hurting world. The Sunday after that lifegroup meeting, my other friend was visiting a church she and her husband used to attend and heard a teacher say something to the effect...
in my friend's words... "In the beginning God made all things good (Gen. 1-2). In fact, Gen 1:31 states that His creation was very good!
In God's creation, man was given the ability of choice, which left a potential for evil. Unfortunately, mankind did choose evil and brought about the curse
and ALL of creation suffers because of that . Gen. 3 through the end of Revelation is how God is redeeming this cursed and fallen world.
God knew beforehand that mankind would choose evil but doesn't want us to always be under the curse and that is why He sent His Son to redeem us and make a way for us to experience what He had intended, where things are very good. Most of us have enough of "heaven" planted in our hearts, that we want things to be good, right, fair, no death, sickness, etc. God wants that too! He has made a place for that very thing (even though we messed this one up) and He wants us to spend eternity with things very good; without the curse-where there is no more tears, fear, shame, death, etc.!
But as with the beginning, we all do have a choice, whether we choose to spend eternity with God and experience all that He intended (which is what most of us
want here on earth) or to spend it totally seperated from God and experience the total opposite of what He intended the curse of death, pain, suffering, etc."
Though there are trials and tribulations in this lifetime; we press on, running the race set before us and know the victory will ultimately come in all its fullness... even when life is hard, don't we?
Post a Comment