Love and Justice of God

 In the Bible we see some passages where God is furiously angry. In other passages, God is full of love for everyone. Which God is real, the angry God or the loving God?
This is a problem for many people.

But have a look inside your own heart. You love your children, but you are angry if someone maliciously hurts your child.

What do you think should happen to someone who rapes your wife or your daughter and shows no remorse?

In the Bible, we see that God is love.

And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. 1 Jn 4:16 NIV

But then we see that God is angry. But isn’t God a loving father? Yes. But could it be that God is angry because he is a loving father?

Jesus said to his disciples: “Things that cause people to stumble are bound to come, but woe to anyone through whom they come. 
It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck than to cause one of these little ones to stumble. Lk 17:1–2 NIV

If someone seduces your daughter, and she becomes a prostitute, how do you think you would feel towards the man who ruined your daughter’s life? Would you easily forgive him?

But God is love. He wants to forgive, but only if the offender sincerely wants to change and be forgiven.

God is also a God of justice. Offences must be punished. God wants to save us from our own perverse character, so He sent his son Jesus to be punished and suffer death on our behalf.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Jn 3:16–17 NIV

Never Give Up!

Sometimes I feel flat, grey, uninspired. Maybe you do too. Don't be discouraged. God has given you life. You have potential. You have gifts. God created you for a purpose, to help people in a way that perhaps only you can help them.

My wife is always helping people and she likes gardening. The elderly lady across the road had a rose garden and my wife helped to look after her roses.

I love writing, so I write Christian blog articles to encourage people to believe, to give people hope.
A retired man in our church is a good organiser. He helps to manage a store room in our church to supply people with food when they can’t afford to go shopping.

Suppose you want to serve God. Find some way to help people in need. Visit a sick neighbour. Drive an elderly neighbour to see the doctor. If you are friendly and talk to people, you can find out what they need and how to help them.

Suppose you are serving God and helping people, but you feel discouraged and lacking direction. Maybe you need to take a break, go for a walk, read a good book, listen to beautiful music, but don't give up. Keep on doing good. Ask God for fresh inspiration and keep going.

Perhaps you reach a dead end. Ask God to give you fresh energy to keep going, or if God closes the door, ask Him to open another door and give you a new direction.

Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. 
Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers. Gal 6:9–10 NIV 

No One Is Always Right

Bible knowledge and spiritual gifts are from God and they are good, but knowledge and gifts come with dangers. A gifted leader with excellent knowledge can become overconfident, self righteous, convinced that he is always right.

I knew a preacher with amazing bible knowledge, healing gifts and a wonderful evangelistic ministry. He was zealously devoted to sound doctrine, but this became an obsession which alienated him from other preachers who had different beliefs, even small differences of opinion.

He tried to pastor a local church, which was a mistake, because his primary gifting and calling was evangelism. His local church failed dismally, with membership declining until there was only a tiny home group left. Still he persisted, burning himself out to earn a living and missing his calling to be a full time travelling evangelist.

If you are in a church where the pastor has wonderful bible knowledge and spiritual gifts, that can be good or it can be bad.

• If the pastor believes he is always right, that is dangerous.

• If the pastor believes he knows better than everyone else, everyone in his church or even better than other ministers, that is dangerous.

• If the pastor believes he is entitled to make every decision for every ministry in the church, that is dangerous.

If you are in a church like this, there are several dangers.

• You can become overly submissive, so that you let the pastor dictate all your personal decisions.

• You can zealously adopt all the ideas of your pastor, so your pastor takes the place of God in your life.

• You can become like your pastor, believing you are always right.

• You can rebel against control, which is good, but then you construct your own understanding of truth in such a way that you disagree with your pastor, but you are infected by his wrong attitude, so that you believe you are always right.

• You can attach yourself to another prominent church member with a legitimate grievance but also with a personal agenda. This can lead to church splits.

• You can search the internet or christian bookshops for alternative points of view, which is good, but it can lead to being led astray in wrong directions.

So what should you do?
Seek out good teaching from different sources but be careful to be personally connected to Jesus.
Read you bible for yourself, not just to find confirmation for this or that teaching, but with an open mind and a questioning heart.
Ask God to show you what He wants to say to you.

Find a better church, where the pastor is not convinced he always knows better, because this is a delusion. No one is always right about everything. No one.

And if you faithfully apply all these things, you will still not always be right. You will make mistakes. No one is perfect. You are not perfect and I am not perfect.

Those who think they know something do not yet know as they ought to know. 
But whoever loves God is known by God. 1 Cor 8:2–3 NIV

 

A Better Future with Jesus

 Let’s make Bible truth really simple.

There is no condemnation now for those who live in union with Christ Jesus. Rom 8:1 GNB

Now that we have been put right with God through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Rom 5:1 GNB

God says I am OK with Him because Jesus paid the price for my sin. I was not OK but God put things right and now I am OK with God and I can be OK with myself.

For God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not die but have eternal life. Jn 3:16 GNB

I am OK with God and He wants me to be with him from now on. Death is only a transition to a better life, a better world, a better place.

God Rescues

 So many times God has stepped in to my life when I most needed help.

God is our shelter and strength,
always ready to help in times of trouble. Ps 46:1 GNB

I was recovering from a very serious mental breakdown and I was teaching a class  when I was still not very well. Without warning I had a panic attack in front of my class. The students saw the distress on my face and burst out laughing. I remember one young man doubled over and laughing hilariously as he left the room. I quickly recovered my composure and told the class to take a 15 minute break.

I went into the next room and cried out to God for help. I asked Him for inspiration to teach a good lesson after the break. I immediately had a good idea and went on to teach an excellent lesson. The students calmed down and responded as if nothing had happened. At the end of the course the students showed enthusiastic appreciation.

When I met my wife, I knew that I wanted to marry her. But only a few weeks later I was made redundant and lost my job. I had no job and no income. Then I got some casual work for a few hours a week. That increased and increased and by the end of the year I was working full time again.

Two years later the teachers’ union won a court case for the teachers who had been laid off and I received $20,000 in back pay.

Then I applied for a promotion. I didn’t think I had a chance but a colleague encouraged me to apply. I spent two sleepless nights writing my application and took my draft to a secretarial service. The application was faxed at 4.55 pm, just before 5 pm, the rigid deadline. I was amazed when I got the promotion and the pay rise.

Some colleagues said my application was late but I checked at the office. The fax arrived less than one minute before the deadline.

God says, “I will save those who love me
and will protect those who acknowledge me as LORD.
When they call to me, I will answer them;
when they are in trouble, I will be with them.
I will rescue them and honour them. Ps 91:14-15 GNB

Everyone is Important to God

For if anyone thinks himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. Gal 6:3 NKJV

This verse is difficult to understand. How can a son or daughter of God be nothing?

 When I was a new Christian, a pastor tried to correct my tendency to pride. He told me I was “nothing”.. Of course, he exercised so much power to judge and control me, that he seemed to be saying he was super important, but I was quite literally “nothing”. This is not Christlike ministry at all. It was spiritual abuse.

Paul was a Jews, as was Jesus. In Hebrew thinking we often find extreme black and white statements which are really shocking if we take them literally.

“If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. Lk 14:26 NKJV

Jesus also tells us to love on another. Paul tells husbands to love their wives. Parents who hate their children are the worst sinners on earth. So Jesus is not telling us to hate people, but rather to love God more then we love our families.

Likewise, in Galatians, Paul is telling us not to be self important but to consider other people to be at least as important as ourselves.

Do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Php 2:3 NRSVue

Here again, Paul is not telling me I should go around feeling inferior to everyone. That is sick.

No. I see an insane man pulling faces and talking to himself. He is just as important to God as I am.

Years ago I was a language teacher. A young woman in my class was dressing and acting like a prostitute and I think she was. She was as important to God as myself.

So many churches teach women that their husbands are more important than they are, because men as supposedly wiser than women. The bible talks about doctrines of demons and I am convinced this is one of them.

I look around church meetings and I almost always see more women than men. Women who love God often find it hard to find a husband who is spiritually strong enough to be their married partner, and yet people rip bible texts out of context and tell us that the husband should always be the spiritual leader.

Clear eyed observation tells me this is dangerous nonsense.

Jesus tells you that you are dearly loved by the Heavenly Father. If you believe that Jesus suffered the punishment for your sins on the cross, if you accept the forgiveness that Jesus offers, you have eternal life.

You are a son or daughter of God for ever and ever. You cannot be a nobody. You are a very important somebody in God’s eyes, but you are not more important than anyone else. Why? Because God loves everyone without exception.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Jn 3:16 NRSVue

Faithfulness in Small Things

 Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, 
and walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God. Eph 5:1–2 NRSVue

“Walking in love” is a very meaningful concept. Loving God and loving other people is a daily, hourly, minute by minute way of life. When I go shopping or walk in the park, I often see someone who looks sad or broken and I spontaneously offer a prayer for him or her.

When I pay for groceries at the supermarket checkout, I try to be friendly and take a personal interest in the cashier.

When I walk in the park, I often start friendly conversations with strangers. This can lead to meaningful spiritual communication, although I don’t usually preach to everyone.

I usually get up before my wife and I make a cup of coffee for her. A lifestyle of love may involve intense urgent prayer for people in trouble but if your whole life revolves around spiritual drama and you neglect the little things, you are not “walking in love.”

Jesus healed the sick and raised the dead, but He also washed His disciples’ feet. Husbands often see menial household tasks as the job of their wives, but Jesus was the King of Kings who came to serve. A husband should not always wait for his wife to clean the toilet.

Following Jesus means learning to be like Jesus. Pray for people and expect miracles. Tell people about the love of God, but also help people in little practical ways. Cultivate habits of kind deeds.

I get irritated when Christian casually use biblical words without any thought about the meaning. So often Christians talk about their “Christian walk” but I don’t often hear teaching about the deep meaning behind these words. This expression has sadly become a religious cliché.

Another aspect of the “Christian walk” is a willingness to make small changes in your life, to improve step by step.

If you are a talker, like me, learn to be a better listener. Start at home with your husband or wife and your children. If you are preacher, practice respectfully listening to the concerns and ideas of your church members.

You must understand this, my beloved brothers and sisters: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger,
for human anger does not produce God’s righteousness. Jas 1:19–20 NRSVue

If you are untidy, like I am, practise small improvements. Straighten your bed when you get up. Wash dishes after you use them. Learn better habits, step by step.

If you are always compulsively busy, pause from time to time, think about something to thank God for. Pray a short prayer for yourself or someone in need. Go for a short walk in the garden and relax for a few minutes. A machine that works non stop wears out more quickly. The same applies to human beings.