Note: If you've not had the opportunity to read the foreward or previous chapters and would like to, please look for the title of this writing under the "Blog Pages" tab above and click on it. You'll find what's available to date under that tab. jbh
The Passion Well
Chapter 3:
The Trail Of Resolution - Finding The Why
" ... Lord, strip from me this world and its values while I yet occupy it that I not become heir to its folly. Let me see with the vision of eternal eyes and live thinking with an eternal mind, because you have made me eternal. Let my ambitions and actions be toward a day far from now, one beyond my current occupation of this place. Let these things be found to be true of me that I may not sin in my pursuit of what you have declared righteous and that my existence brings life to all that I encounter. In your great mercy Lord, let it be so." jbh
I personally believe that as much as we can share His grace together, our relationship with our Lord is a very personal one and one in which He relates to and deals with each of us passionately and individually according to the needs and condition of our spiritual character. What's offered here is with the utmost sincerity based on my own personal experiences with Him and my own serious search and study of Him and His word over the years that I've traveled with Him and have been the beneficiary of His patience and merciful, endless grace...
To read accurate things about our God is good and His word can be trusted. However, when those things that we read and assume that we understand don't seem to play out the way that we understand them and in what we experience in our own lives, those unresolved discrepancies can leave room for reservations and doubt. My childhood profession of faith over time became peppered with little voids and unresolved questions of my own that were grossly exploited and inflamed when repeatedly confronted with a particular friends' rather fervent scoffing and well aimed questioning. At a point to come, and after some serious thought, I would become convinced that there were only two reasonable responses. I could give up my belief and abandon what I'd been taught since childhood (which wasn't an option - damnation has never appealed to me in the slightest), or I could resolve to crack the nut of true understanding by fully surrendering myself and shamelessly pressing in to truly know Him.
I'm not going to recount the fullness of everything that I've researched and uncovered in my own quest to answer those questions. The information is available to be discovered and too voluminous to be included here. But I'll offer enough to give doubters reasonable doubt to doubt their doubt and consider making an investment in discovering the truth for themselves.
Though there are many biblical things that the world might choose to misinterpret or contest, there are very few people of good heart who will question whether or not Jesus walked the earth. History supports His presence on the earth and the majority of people accept that He did walk among us as a fact. So then, with that in mind the real and all so important question becomes - who was He? Some say that he was just a man. Some will say that He was a prophet and there are some others still who would call Him a radical. And while I do agree that He was radical, I'm also convinced that He IS much more ...
In an honest attempt to step back and look for a historical record of Jesus outside of the Bible I discovered Josephus, a Jewish historian who refers to Jesus in his writings as he collected documentation to create his archive around 93-94 AD. Then there's Tacitus a Roman historian who's mentioned to have had a much less than enthusiastic attitude toward Christians, but who also wrote about Jesus and His Crucifixion in 116 AD for the Roman record. The Talmud, a Jewish literary work central to the Jewish faith is also reputed to have made several references to Jesus.
In 70 AD the Roman Legion Commander Titus Flavius Vespasianus, under the direction of his father the Emperor Vespasian, captured rebellious Jewish Jerusalem. Convinced that the religion of the Jews was in part responsible for their continual uprisings, Titus utterly and vehemently destroyed the Jewish Temple leaving no stones stacked one upon another. It's important to note that there's no mention in the gospels of the New Testament of Titus' destruction of the temple. The destruction of the temple would have been the most despicable and highly lamented atrocity committed against the Jewish nation. It was such a horror to them that it's still lamented centuries later. But in those four gospels there was not one mention of its' demise which attests to the fact that it happened after the gospels were written.
Christ's crucifixion took place between 30 and 33 AD, which means that there was a period of 40 years or less between Christ's death on the cross and the temples destruction. It also means ... that there were many witnesses to Christ's life, teaching and crucifixion still alive when the gospels were written. Some scholars have said that there was actually no more than 20 years between Christ's sacrificial death and the completion of some of the written record that we call the gospels... they watched it and then wrote it down.
Further study reveals much more supportive discussion, but in general, historical scholars seem to agree that Jesus did in fact walk the earth. So having established these things with some joy in my own heart, my quest moves to further bear up what I already believed from a Biblical standpoint.
In my own search I came across at least 44 prophecies to be found in the old testament regarding Jesus - some given hundreds of years before His birth. They described numerous exacting details including who He was and is (the Son of God), how He would be conceived, where He would be born, His name, that He was to be a sacrifice for sin, what He would be like, many of the things He would do and how others would react to Him, how He would be treated, what He would say, how He would be arrested, how He would respond, how He would be beaten, how He would be convicted, how He would die, how He would be buried, resurrected and how He would ascend to heaven. There are at least 60 scriptures in the New Testament, most of them from eye witnesses, that were written down so that we could know that Jesus fulfilled those prophecies to the last one. Some say that there are many more, even hundreds more prophecies than the 44 that I mentioned and they then go on to purport to provide evidences to show that He fulfilled them all.
During His life on earth, Jesus Himself predicted many things regarding His own future and they were written down. Among them were the details regarding His future arrest, death and resurrection as well as the manner of death that some of His followers would face after Him - they were all witnessed to be true and these things were also written down by people who were there so that we would know about it. I determined that if He could do all of that flawlessly (including being resurrected from the dead as was witnessed) in addition to fulfilling all of the many predictions made about Him by others hundreds of years prior to His birth and recorded in the Old Testament - I have to accept that He is who He said He is.
No one could do all of that to the letter and in every essence of spirit and being ... except the Son of God Himself. The overwhelming evidence that was there to be found made me know that I had more than enough reason to believe that not only that He was the Son of God, but that I had more than enough reason to believe everything that He said as well. This became in large part, the more mature and considered "adult" reinforcement of my faith in Christ and everything that He's said. I recognized it as the "adult" foundational cornerstone of "the why".
But this alone didn't answer the basis of my quest to answer some other nagging questions. What I learned became more well established intellectual facts in my own mind, but I needed more. I needed to understand Him in order to allow myself to trust Him on a more personal and intimate level and I couldn't do that without knowing Him. Without knowing Him, those questions that my friend continually posed and some of the events that I experienced in my own life held some ominous questionable implications as long as they were allowed to remain unanswered.
After first reading the New Testament repeatedly and savoring the essence of Father God's awesome nature and character to be found there in Christ, I dug deeper into studying Him from the pages of the Old Testament. After taking in the essence of Christ's humble and loving spirit from the pages of the New Testament and understanding by Christ's own declaration that "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father!", I knew that I had seen the spirit and character of my Father God through the example of Christ, His Son.
In invested study, one has the opportunity to recognize that Jesus gave great weight to the to the events and teachings presented in the books of the Old Testament and thereby gave them validation. So my study began to take me down a different path with a very direct intent. It became obvious that if I wanted to understand God The Father to any degree, some of the answers I was looking for could be found most easily through the history of His actions and words there.
Being a father who dearly loves his children myself, I hoped that I might be able to understand at least something of Father God's heart by reading from that perspective. To say that the exercise broke my heart would be a serious understatement. Not only did I find that I could relate to Him, I found myself in complete awe of His love, patience and compassion in spite of His incredible power and the suffering that He endured at the hands of His own beloved children.
As I undertook this effort, I asked the Lord to allow me to see as He sees, to hear as He hears and to give me a heart in pursuit of His own and one that's moved by what moves His. He honored my continually repeated request and what I experienced changed me forever. At varying times I was both crushed at the pain of rejection and filled with awesome joy. I discovered a completely omnipotent, righteous, holy and just God who feels things - a divine Father with emotions. He's not like us - He's perfect in every facet of His being. But I realized that in some ways, ... we are like Him.
My appetite to know Him as my Father and a real person became insatiable and I sought Him out greedily in the pages of the Old Testament from the perspective of a child seeking for the first time with a desperation to understand the heart of his Father. A true effort meant viewing Him with trusting eyes, attempting to feel what His emotions must have been and attempting to understand the motivations of someone whose spirit I was so attracted to by reflection through Christ's spirit - a Father that I came to love so much more deeply because of what was reflected by His Son. This person that I was pursuing is someone who's truly pledged that His plans "are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope", so my success now in understanding His heart and reconciling certain things, meant trying to view those things from His point of view.
Over time I came to understand that my lack of answers and any misunderstandings I'd held previously were purely the product of my own lack of effort to know and my own selfish perspective. None of this discovery would've come about without a planned stirring of my own heart by a Father whose desire to enjoy a living relationship with His child existed from the moment that it came into His mind to form me in my mother's womb.
What I found personally in my own search to find those earlier missing answers has become the rock that anchors my faith and has become the joy and great hope for this life that I've been given. What I've learned has only come by pressing in to know Him personally. And for Him, our coming to know Him begins to answer His purpose in our creation by setting the stage for an irresistible relationship. My only regret now is the amount of time that I stood stagnant - those years not spent seeking out and actively investing in that relationship. But what I've learned since is divinely, completing and eternally satisfying.
The world has its own forms of learned values, wisdom and consequent instruction toward success and those have a way of creeping from generation to generation. They sometimes infect the ability of the limited to understand the far greater unlimited - because the unlimited can be irreconcilable to limited reasoning and our flesh seeks the tangible. For myself, I learned to recognize that in order for me to draw closer to what my heart confirmed that I desperately longed for, I had to unlearn some of what I'd picked up along the way from the world around me.
There are so many pitfalls available to spiritually and intellectually trap, maim and divert those who would dare seek to find that one thing that completely and truly satisfies, quenching that undefinable thirst we were born with - the thirst for whatever "it" is. I found that the answer to "it" truly is well defined and singular in every case, but a world that must first see to believe will be challenged to find what must first be believed to be seen - as ordained by the greater unlimited...
In His unlimited ability to know everything that there is to know, our God knows the ending of every path we might choose to follow in our life's search for Him well before we find it. And in His grace filled, passionate love for us He has the fatherly kindness to attempt to correct us when we choose the wrong path if we're willing to both listen to and accept His correction. The only thing that might be in question given our free will to choose, is whether or not we make that one all important choice - the choice to truly trust Him to lead us down the path He's directing us to follow.
It's our flesh that sometimes wrestles with that choice because it's selfish and it assumes that by choosing to trust our God to walk the narrow path of His higher standards, the possibility exists that it could be denied some sought after desire or comfort. The freeing and unlimited truth, is that we'll find true, peaceful contentment by honoring God to seek Him first ... always. That's the way we were designed to live this life by Him. The design's completely out of our control. We can either submit to it or fight it, but the consequences for either path we choose have already been determined. As much as the world in its own wisdom might vehemently disagree, we're not our own masters and the day's coming when all the world will be forced to acknowledge that truth.
I believe that in our God's perspective it's not our flesh, but our spirit that has His greatest interest and concern in it's eternal disposition. So in His perspective, spiritual health will always take priority over other issues and play the larger role in His decisions regarding our lives. Although He does indeed desire for us to have joy and to find contentment in this life, I believe that it was never His intention that our flesh should be anything other than a vehicle, a temporary existence created to provide a training and proving ground for the eternal spirits that He actually created us to be. In His perspective, we're not the flesh and bone creatures that we're so easily tempted to see ourselves as. What He sees when He looks at us are the spirits that He created to live eternally, now only momentarily encased in flesh and bone - Flesh and bone that's a disposable, biodegradable, temporary housing for you and I - for spirits that will continue to live out eternity beyond the expiration date of our flesh as they were designed to do from the very beginning.
With that in mind and as believers, if in the eyes of our flesh we should encounter the worst possible calamity and our flesh itself should suddenly die, ... what have we really lost? If we're following His leading and trust in His promises, we'll have lost nothing ... but instead, will have gained everything that He really intended for us from the beginning. We'll have simply traded a physical body subject to discomfort, pain and decay for a much more perfect existence without the negative influences of our flesh. So why do we sometimes struggle in our ability to trust Him? I believe that it's related to OUR perspective.
It occurred to me some time ago that if His word is unerringly true, but I'm not finding that the things happening in my own life are looking like they're matching up to it, then maybe I need to adjust how I'm looking at things and my understanding of them. I realized that maybe, just maybe, in order to understand a massive, all knowing, all powerful God I had to start thinking outside of the shriveled little bubble of my own self absorbed, self recognized cosmos. I knew that the little squirrel treading the wheel in my skull cage could never match pace with an unlimited God, so I understood that I would need His divine help if I was ever going to begin to understand Him and how He sees things. I was so certain that if He loves me as much as He's undeniably demonstrated in history and even in the history of my own life, He would want me to understand His heart and love Him for it. So I pray on a regular basis for His perspective - to see things as He sees them, to hear things as He hears them, for a heart that is in pursuit of His own and one that's moved by the things that move His.
As I began to pray this way and He began to answer, I began to discover that it's a profound adjustment to the viewpoint that we as creatures enduring a temporary flesh and blood existence have a tendency to limit ourselves to. So as I encounter and consider things in my life now, it's with an ongoing effort to try to see them through His eyes. Because His viewpoint is vast and absolutely the truth of what exists ...
For example, I've become the recipient of an unexpected experience that's brought an interesting spiritual observation and belief of my own to the forefront of my mind while considering how others might be tempted to think about it. I personally believe that this physical issue has a positive eternal purpose and while I'm reassured that it's usually only temporary (it's lasted for well over a year now), I think it may have some eternal value. So my own concern these days isn't whether or not it goes away or even how long it may last, but that my Lord's purpose in it is fully realized. Sound crazy? If so, try thinking bigger - Father God big.
I may or may not be the target of His intention in this new adventure - He may minister to someone else through it and I may never even know. But I stopped doubting with good reason a long time ago about whether His intentions are always for good and that He knows absolutely what I can bear. He's got this - so I'm really not much concerned except that His will be fully accomplished. Some others seem a bit more concerned about it than I, but my understanding of His heart toward me is one that's been taught through the faithful attention of my Lord over a period of years - to a point that it's become more than a level of faith, but instead one of comfortable ... personal ... knowledge. This body is His and I am His. I trust Him and His heart for me, so I submit myself in this to His will contentedly.
"Lord, we know that this isn't your will ...". Let's suppose that these were words offered by someone with a precious, loving heart and good intention as part of a prayer against this new physical experience ... are they true? I'm a willing vessel in submission to His will and believing that His intentions are for good based on my experience and study of Him, I'm not so sure I would be too quick to agree that they are. ...
Though I know without any doubt that God's anger toward man is quenched by Christ's sacrifice on our behalf, I'm not convinced as some seem to be that His unchanging character has changed. What I mean is that I don't believe that He's any less dedicated as our perfect loving Father who's intent on training and developing the character of His children toward His eternal perspective of success than He ever has been. I struggle heavily against a particular idea that runs contrary to what I've personally experienced in my own life with my God. It's the idea, and I guess you could call it belief in some cases that our God places such strict limits on His own plans, discipline and training of us to such a degree that He would never allow or cause something to bring us discomfort.
I do not believe and never will say that God does or has done anything evil or is responsible for every "bad" thing that happens. But I do believe that He may lovingly allow us to experience what could be termed simply as corrective discomfort by comparison to the unending agony of an eternal death. I also believe that the accomplishment of His greater spiritual and eternal purposes could sometimes involve physical discomfort to our fleeting temporary bodies. I think we need to be cautious about judging some things too quickly, because what we might need to do instead is to adjust our definition and understanding of such things - our small perspective, to match His unlimited one (bigger perspective, think God big) ...
***
2 Corinthians 4:17-18 (NLT)
17 "For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! 18 So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever."
***
Our Lord's constant and unchanging, a fact supported in scripture. So would anyone think that the nature of the Lord that we can see and learn so much about through the Old Testament is any different in our current day? It's true that through Christ's sacrifice and atonement on our behalf, our relationship to Him is no longer one that has us as believers under Father God's wrath. But why would anyone have reason to assume that He's no longer directly involved in Fatherly nurturing and guiding what He so obviously and dearly loves? I propose that He hasn't changed in His devoted and intimate involvement with us one iota. Except perhaps for the possibility that since we're no longer separated from Him by sin, our ability to have a much more personal relationship with Him might allow for Him to deal with us even more intimately - if we choose to seek Him out and submit ourselves to His will.
Consider what things that the Lord historically has or hasn't been willing to do or to allow justly and righteously in His sovereignty:
For example, the Lord arranged for a great fish to swallow Jonah ...
*** Jonah 1:17 (NLT)
"Now the LORD had arranged for a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was inside the fish for three days and three nights."
***
The Lord allow the Apostle Paul to suffer a thorn in His flesh ...
***
The Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:6-9 (NLT)
6 "If I wanted to boast, I would be no fool in doing so, because I would be telling the truth. But I won’t do it, because I don’t want anyone to give me credit beyond what they can see in my life or hear in my message, 7 even though I have received such wonderful revelations from God. So to keep me from becoming proud, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me and keep me from becoming proud. 8 Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away. 9 Each time he said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me."
***
The Lord caused a wayward, stubborn Israel to suffer terribly in His efforts to get them to abandon their wicked ways and to bring them back to Himself ...
***
Amos 4:2-11 (NLT)
2 The Sovereign LORD has sworn this by his holiness: “The time will come when you will be led away with hooks in your noses. Every last one of you will be dragged away like a fish on a hook! 3 You will be led out through the ruins of the wall; you will be thrown from your fortresses, ” says the LORD . 4 “Go ahead and offer sacrifices to the idols at Bethel. Keep on disobeying at Gilgal. Offer sacrifices each morning, and bring your tithes every three days. 5 Present your bread made with yeast as an offering of thanksgiving. Then give your extra voluntary offerings so you can brag about it everywhere! This is the kind of thing you Israelites love to do,” says the Sovereign LORD . 6 “I brought hunger to every city and famine to every town. But still you would not return to me,” says the LORD . 7 “I kept the rain from falling when your crops needed it the most. I sent rain on one town but withheld it from another. Rain fell on one field, while another field withered away. 8 People staggered from town to town looking for water, but there was never enough. But still you would not return to me,” says the LORD . 9 “I struck your farms and vineyards with blight and mildew. Locusts devoured all your fig and olive trees. But still you would not return to me,” says the LORD . 10 “I sent plagues on you like the plagues I sent on Egypt long ago. I killed your young men in war and led all your horses away. The stench of death filled the air! But still you would not return to me,” says the LORD . 11 “I destroyed some of your cities, as I destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. Those of you who survived were like charred sticks pulled from a fire. But still you would not return to me,” says the LORD.
***
Consider also the story of Joseph in the book of Genesis and His suffering at the hands of his brothers and Potiphar's wife, and the suffering of the Children of Israel in the desert after their freedom from Egypt as God began to refine them as His people. There are many accounts of God's involvement with mankind that involved suffering. But if you study and see them from His perspective, in every one He had a good eternal purpose.
The nature of God's relationship with man since the garden of Eden was graciously changed through Christ - just as He had planned for it from the beginning - "God's secret plan" as Paul called it. We've had an opportunity to witness what He likes and dislikes and also how He interacts with us throughout the historical period of the Old Testament. The revelation of His heart and spirit reflected through Christ in the New Testament can help establish a different viewpoint from which to observe the person of our heavenly Father in the Old. This was the period before Christ's selfless act of grace when there was still a separation between God and man caused by man's sin. But even then His heart, desiring relationship with mankind was clear. And with sin now out of the way based on the opportunity to obtain forgiveness through Christ's grace, what would keep our Lord from interacting with us even more closely now given His deep and passionate love for each of us and the removal of the obstacle of sin that separated us previously? Without a doubt, we have the opportunity to experience an intimate relationship that far exceeds the faithfulness, love and satisfaction of any other if we're willing to invest ourselves in it - and it begins with trusting Him. The veil of separation from the Holy Place has been torn and we've been invited into His presence eternally, to know intimately and to be known by the very God who created us.
***
Jeremiah 29:11 (NLT)
"For I know the plans I have for you,” says the LORD . “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope."
***
Some sadly seem to see God as distant from their day to day lives and tend to seem comfortable with making judgments about His involvement with us on a personal level. But when it comes to our trying to make judgments about what God's character allows Him to do in our midst, I've learned to think that we need to be careful about our assessments based on what we can learn from His historical unchanging nature and unlimited wisdom.
Can anyone with man's limited capacity, understanding and perspective say that they truly know and understand our God's plans that are currently being enacted their lives or His reasons for them? Can we really challenge the sovereign Lord's unlimited perspective of anything including righteousness and justice? Given that He owns everything He's created including us, who can tell Him that what He's doing or not doing is righteous or just? His wisdom and perspective are far greater than our own and without our limitations. His intentions are always for our good so if there's any disconnect between what He says, does and allows, and my own personal understanding and interpretations regarding His character and ways, I've learned by experience to humbly submit that the error lies with me. I have to trust completely in faith that He is all things that He says He is and demonstrates. On the other hand, I also believe that in part, a lot of what we see in the world is not necessarily God's doing, but simply the result of men exercising their free will in evil ways that grieve God's heart. This is something that they have the freedom to do, but something that they will also one day have the inescapable responsibility to answer for.
I think there's also another cause for some of the suffering and evil we witness in addition to what men may do given their free will and the evil in their own hearts. The destructive nature of the sin that entered the world through Adam and Eve's disobedience can be blamed for much, but we can't forget that though he's been cast down, satan still has destructive power that he uses anywhere he's allowed access. He's not nearly as powerful as our God, but he does have power. We can witness the fact that he has power by an example in the Old Testament book of Job.
***
Job 1:12-19 (NLT)
12 “All right, you may test him,” the LORD said to Satan. “Do whatever you want with everything he possesses, but don’t harm him physically.” So Satan left the LORD ’s presence. 13 One day when Job’s sons and daughters were feasting at the oldest brother’s house, 14 a messenger arrived at Job’s home with this
And again in Job 2:7 (NLT)
The Passion Well
Chapter 3:
The Trail Of Resolution - Finding The Why
" ... Lord, strip from me this world and its values while I yet occupy it that I not become heir to its folly. Let me see with the vision of eternal eyes and live thinking with an eternal mind, because you have made me eternal. Let my ambitions and actions be toward a day far from now, one beyond my current occupation of this place. Let these things be found to be true of me that I may not sin in my pursuit of what you have declared righteous and that my existence brings life to all that I encounter. In your great mercy Lord, let it be so." jbh
I personally believe that as much as we can share His grace together, our relationship with our Lord is a very personal one and one in which He relates to and deals with each of us passionately and individually according to the needs and condition of our spiritual character. What's offered here is with the utmost sincerity based on my own personal experiences with Him and my own serious search and study of Him and His word over the years that I've traveled with Him and have been the beneficiary of His patience and merciful, endless grace...
To read accurate things about our God is good and His word can be trusted. However, when those things that we read and assume that we understand don't seem to play out the way that we understand them and in what we experience in our own lives, those unresolved discrepancies can leave room for reservations and doubt. My childhood profession of faith over time became peppered with little voids and unresolved questions of my own that were grossly exploited and inflamed when repeatedly confronted with a particular friends' rather fervent scoffing and well aimed questioning. At a point to come, and after some serious thought, I would become convinced that there were only two reasonable responses. I could give up my belief and abandon what I'd been taught since childhood (which wasn't an option - damnation has never appealed to me in the slightest), or I could resolve to crack the nut of true understanding by fully surrendering myself and shamelessly pressing in to truly know Him.
I'm not going to recount the fullness of everything that I've researched and uncovered in my own quest to answer those questions. The information is available to be discovered and too voluminous to be included here. But I'll offer enough to give doubters reasonable doubt to doubt their doubt and consider making an investment in discovering the truth for themselves.
Though there are many biblical things that the world might choose to misinterpret or contest, there are very few people of good heart who will question whether or not Jesus walked the earth. History supports His presence on the earth and the majority of people accept that He did walk among us as a fact. So then, with that in mind the real and all so important question becomes - who was He? Some say that he was just a man. Some will say that He was a prophet and there are some others still who would call Him a radical. And while I do agree that He was radical, I'm also convinced that He IS much more ...
In an honest attempt to step back and look for a historical record of Jesus outside of the Bible I discovered Josephus, a Jewish historian who refers to Jesus in his writings as he collected documentation to create his archive around 93-94 AD. Then there's Tacitus a Roman historian who's mentioned to have had a much less than enthusiastic attitude toward Christians, but who also wrote about Jesus and His Crucifixion in 116 AD for the Roman record. The Talmud, a Jewish literary work central to the Jewish faith is also reputed to have made several references to Jesus.
In 70 AD the Roman Legion Commander Titus Flavius Vespasianus, under the direction of his father the Emperor Vespasian, captured rebellious Jewish Jerusalem. Convinced that the religion of the Jews was in part responsible for their continual uprisings, Titus utterly and vehemently destroyed the Jewish Temple leaving no stones stacked one upon another. It's important to note that there's no mention in the gospels of the New Testament of Titus' destruction of the temple. The destruction of the temple would have been the most despicable and highly lamented atrocity committed against the Jewish nation. It was such a horror to them that it's still lamented centuries later. But in those four gospels there was not one mention of its' demise which attests to the fact that it happened after the gospels were written.
Christ's crucifixion took place between 30 and 33 AD, which means that there was a period of 40 years or less between Christ's death on the cross and the temples destruction. It also means ... that there were many witnesses to Christ's life, teaching and crucifixion still alive when the gospels were written. Some scholars have said that there was actually no more than 20 years between Christ's sacrificial death and the completion of some of the written record that we call the gospels... they watched it and then wrote it down.
Further study reveals much more supportive discussion, but in general, historical scholars seem to agree that Jesus did in fact walk the earth. So having established these things with some joy in my own heart, my quest moves to further bear up what I already believed from a Biblical standpoint.
In my own search I came across at least 44 prophecies to be found in the old testament regarding Jesus - some given hundreds of years before His birth. They described numerous exacting details including who He was and is (the Son of God), how He would be conceived, where He would be born, His name, that He was to be a sacrifice for sin, what He would be like, many of the things He would do and how others would react to Him, how He would be treated, what He would say, how He would be arrested, how He would respond, how He would be beaten, how He would be convicted, how He would die, how He would be buried, resurrected and how He would ascend to heaven. There are at least 60 scriptures in the New Testament, most of them from eye witnesses, that were written down so that we could know that Jesus fulfilled those prophecies to the last one. Some say that there are many more, even hundreds more prophecies than the 44 that I mentioned and they then go on to purport to provide evidences to show that He fulfilled them all.
During His life on earth, Jesus Himself predicted many things regarding His own future and they were written down. Among them were the details regarding His future arrest, death and resurrection as well as the manner of death that some of His followers would face after Him - they were all witnessed to be true and these things were also written down by people who were there so that we would know about it. I determined that if He could do all of that flawlessly (including being resurrected from the dead as was witnessed) in addition to fulfilling all of the many predictions made about Him by others hundreds of years prior to His birth and recorded in the Old Testament - I have to accept that He is who He said He is.
No one could do all of that to the letter and in every essence of spirit and being ... except the Son of God Himself. The overwhelming evidence that was there to be found made me know that I had more than enough reason to believe that not only that He was the Son of God, but that I had more than enough reason to believe everything that He said as well. This became in large part, the more mature and considered "adult" reinforcement of my faith in Christ and everything that He's said. I recognized it as the "adult" foundational cornerstone of "the why".
But this alone didn't answer the basis of my quest to answer some other nagging questions. What I learned became more well established intellectual facts in my own mind, but I needed more. I needed to understand Him in order to allow myself to trust Him on a more personal and intimate level and I couldn't do that without knowing Him. Without knowing Him, those questions that my friend continually posed and some of the events that I experienced in my own life held some ominous questionable implications as long as they were allowed to remain unanswered.
After first reading the New Testament repeatedly and savoring the essence of Father God's awesome nature and character to be found there in Christ, I dug deeper into studying Him from the pages of the Old Testament. After taking in the essence of Christ's humble and loving spirit from the pages of the New Testament and understanding by Christ's own declaration that "Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father!", I knew that I had seen the spirit and character of my Father God through the example of Christ, His Son.
In invested study, one has the opportunity to recognize that Jesus gave great weight to the to the events and teachings presented in the books of the Old Testament and thereby gave them validation. So my study began to take me down a different path with a very direct intent. It became obvious that if I wanted to understand God The Father to any degree, some of the answers I was looking for could be found most easily through the history of His actions and words there.
Being a father who dearly loves his children myself, I hoped that I might be able to understand at least something of Father God's heart by reading from that perspective. To say that the exercise broke my heart would be a serious understatement. Not only did I find that I could relate to Him, I found myself in complete awe of His love, patience and compassion in spite of His incredible power and the suffering that He endured at the hands of His own beloved children.
As I undertook this effort, I asked the Lord to allow me to see as He sees, to hear as He hears and to give me a heart in pursuit of His own and one that's moved by what moves His. He honored my continually repeated request and what I experienced changed me forever. At varying times I was both crushed at the pain of rejection and filled with awesome joy. I discovered a completely omnipotent, righteous, holy and just God who feels things - a divine Father with emotions. He's not like us - He's perfect in every facet of His being. But I realized that in some ways, ... we are like Him.
My appetite to know Him as my Father and a real person became insatiable and I sought Him out greedily in the pages of the Old Testament from the perspective of a child seeking for the first time with a desperation to understand the heart of his Father. A true effort meant viewing Him with trusting eyes, attempting to feel what His emotions must have been and attempting to understand the motivations of someone whose spirit I was so attracted to by reflection through Christ's spirit - a Father that I came to love so much more deeply because of what was reflected by His Son. This person that I was pursuing is someone who's truly pledged that His plans "are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope", so my success now in understanding His heart and reconciling certain things, meant trying to view those things from His point of view.
Over time I came to understand that my lack of answers and any misunderstandings I'd held previously were purely the product of my own lack of effort to know and my own selfish perspective. None of this discovery would've come about without a planned stirring of my own heart by a Father whose desire to enjoy a living relationship with His child existed from the moment that it came into His mind to form me in my mother's womb.
What I found personally in my own search to find those earlier missing answers has become the rock that anchors my faith and has become the joy and great hope for this life that I've been given. What I've learned has only come by pressing in to know Him personally. And for Him, our coming to know Him begins to answer His purpose in our creation by setting the stage for an irresistible relationship. My only regret now is the amount of time that I stood stagnant - those years not spent seeking out and actively investing in that relationship. But what I've learned since is divinely, completing and eternally satisfying.
The world has its own forms of learned values, wisdom and consequent instruction toward success and those have a way of creeping from generation to generation. They sometimes infect the ability of the limited to understand the far greater unlimited - because the unlimited can be irreconcilable to limited reasoning and our flesh seeks the tangible. For myself, I learned to recognize that in order for me to draw closer to what my heart confirmed that I desperately longed for, I had to unlearn some of what I'd picked up along the way from the world around me.
There are so many pitfalls available to spiritually and intellectually trap, maim and divert those who would dare seek to find that one thing that completely and truly satisfies, quenching that undefinable thirst we were born with - the thirst for whatever "it" is. I found that the answer to "it" truly is well defined and singular in every case, but a world that must first see to believe will be challenged to find what must first be believed to be seen - as ordained by the greater unlimited...
In His unlimited ability to know everything that there is to know, our God knows the ending of every path we might choose to follow in our life's search for Him well before we find it. And in His grace filled, passionate love for us He has the fatherly kindness to attempt to correct us when we choose the wrong path if we're willing to both listen to and accept His correction. The only thing that might be in question given our free will to choose, is whether or not we make that one all important choice - the choice to truly trust Him to lead us down the path He's directing us to follow.
It's our flesh that sometimes wrestles with that choice because it's selfish and it assumes that by choosing to trust our God to walk the narrow path of His higher standards, the possibility exists that it could be denied some sought after desire or comfort. The freeing and unlimited truth, is that we'll find true, peaceful contentment by honoring God to seek Him first ... always. That's the way we were designed to live this life by Him. The design's completely out of our control. We can either submit to it or fight it, but the consequences for either path we choose have already been determined. As much as the world in its own wisdom might vehemently disagree, we're not our own masters and the day's coming when all the world will be forced to acknowledge that truth.
I believe that in our God's perspective it's not our flesh, but our spirit that has His greatest interest and concern in it's eternal disposition. So in His perspective, spiritual health will always take priority over other issues and play the larger role in His decisions regarding our lives. Although He does indeed desire for us to have joy and to find contentment in this life, I believe that it was never His intention that our flesh should be anything other than a vehicle, a temporary existence created to provide a training and proving ground for the eternal spirits that He actually created us to be. In His perspective, we're not the flesh and bone creatures that we're so easily tempted to see ourselves as. What He sees when He looks at us are the spirits that He created to live eternally, now only momentarily encased in flesh and bone - Flesh and bone that's a disposable, biodegradable, temporary housing for you and I - for spirits that will continue to live out eternity beyond the expiration date of our flesh as they were designed to do from the very beginning.
With that in mind and as believers, if in the eyes of our flesh we should encounter the worst possible calamity and our flesh itself should suddenly die, ... what have we really lost? If we're following His leading and trust in His promises, we'll have lost nothing ... but instead, will have gained everything that He really intended for us from the beginning. We'll have simply traded a physical body subject to discomfort, pain and decay for a much more perfect existence without the negative influences of our flesh. So why do we sometimes struggle in our ability to trust Him? I believe that it's related to OUR perspective.
It occurred to me some time ago that if His word is unerringly true, but I'm not finding that the things happening in my own life are looking like they're matching up to it, then maybe I need to adjust how I'm looking at things and my understanding of them. I realized that maybe, just maybe, in order to understand a massive, all knowing, all powerful God I had to start thinking outside of the shriveled little bubble of my own self absorbed, self recognized cosmos. I knew that the little squirrel treading the wheel in my skull cage could never match pace with an unlimited God, so I understood that I would need His divine help if I was ever going to begin to understand Him and how He sees things. I was so certain that if He loves me as much as He's undeniably demonstrated in history and even in the history of my own life, He would want me to understand His heart and love Him for it. So I pray on a regular basis for His perspective - to see things as He sees them, to hear things as He hears them, for a heart that is in pursuit of His own and one that's moved by the things that move His.
As I began to pray this way and He began to answer, I began to discover that it's a profound adjustment to the viewpoint that we as creatures enduring a temporary flesh and blood existence have a tendency to limit ourselves to. So as I encounter and consider things in my life now, it's with an ongoing effort to try to see them through His eyes. Because His viewpoint is vast and absolutely the truth of what exists ...
For example, I've become the recipient of an unexpected experience that's brought an interesting spiritual observation and belief of my own to the forefront of my mind while considering how others might be tempted to think about it. I personally believe that this physical issue has a positive eternal purpose and while I'm reassured that it's usually only temporary (it's lasted for well over a year now), I think it may have some eternal value. So my own concern these days isn't whether or not it goes away or even how long it may last, but that my Lord's purpose in it is fully realized. Sound crazy? If so, try thinking bigger - Father God big.
I may or may not be the target of His intention in this new adventure - He may minister to someone else through it and I may never even know. But I stopped doubting with good reason a long time ago about whether His intentions are always for good and that He knows absolutely what I can bear. He's got this - so I'm really not much concerned except that His will be fully accomplished. Some others seem a bit more concerned about it than I, but my understanding of His heart toward me is one that's been taught through the faithful attention of my Lord over a period of years - to a point that it's become more than a level of faith, but instead one of comfortable ... personal ... knowledge. This body is His and I am His. I trust Him and His heart for me, so I submit myself in this to His will contentedly.
"Lord, we know that this isn't your will ...". Let's suppose that these were words offered by someone with a precious, loving heart and good intention as part of a prayer against this new physical experience ... are they true? I'm a willing vessel in submission to His will and believing that His intentions are for good based on my experience and study of Him, I'm not so sure I would be too quick to agree that they are. ...
Though I know without any doubt that God's anger toward man is quenched by Christ's sacrifice on our behalf, I'm not convinced as some seem to be that His unchanging character has changed. What I mean is that I don't believe that He's any less dedicated as our perfect loving Father who's intent on training and developing the character of His children toward His eternal perspective of success than He ever has been. I struggle heavily against a particular idea that runs contrary to what I've personally experienced in my own life with my God. It's the idea, and I guess you could call it belief in some cases that our God places such strict limits on His own plans, discipline and training of us to such a degree that He would never allow or cause something to bring us discomfort.
I do not believe and never will say that God does or has done anything evil or is responsible for every "bad" thing that happens. But I do believe that He may lovingly allow us to experience what could be termed simply as corrective discomfort by comparison to the unending agony of an eternal death. I also believe that the accomplishment of His greater spiritual and eternal purposes could sometimes involve physical discomfort to our fleeting temporary bodies. I think we need to be cautious about judging some things too quickly, because what we might need to do instead is to adjust our definition and understanding of such things - our small perspective, to match His unlimited one (bigger perspective, think God big) ...
***
2 Corinthians 4:17-18 (NLT)
17 "For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! 18 So we don’t look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on things that cannot be seen. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever."
***
Our Lord's constant and unchanging, a fact supported in scripture. So would anyone think that the nature of the Lord that we can see and learn so much about through the Old Testament is any different in our current day? It's true that through Christ's sacrifice and atonement on our behalf, our relationship to Him is no longer one that has us as believers under Father God's wrath. But why would anyone have reason to assume that He's no longer directly involved in Fatherly nurturing and guiding what He so obviously and dearly loves? I propose that He hasn't changed in His devoted and intimate involvement with us one iota. Except perhaps for the possibility that since we're no longer separated from Him by sin, our ability to have a much more personal relationship with Him might allow for Him to deal with us even more intimately - if we choose to seek Him out and submit ourselves to His will.
Consider what things that the Lord historically has or hasn't been willing to do or to allow justly and righteously in His sovereignty:
For example, the Lord arranged for a great fish to swallow Jonah ...
*** Jonah 1:17 (NLT)
"Now the LORD had arranged for a great fish to swallow Jonah. And Jonah was inside the fish for three days and three nights."
***
The Lord allow the Apostle Paul to suffer a thorn in His flesh ...
***
The Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:6-9 (NLT)
6 "If I wanted to boast, I would be no fool in doing so, because I would be telling the truth. But I won’t do it, because I don’t want anyone to give me credit beyond what they can see in my life or hear in my message, 7 even though I have received such wonderful revelations from God. So to keep me from becoming proud, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me and keep me from becoming proud. 8 Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away. 9 Each time he said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” So now I am glad to boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ can work through me."
***
The Lord caused a wayward, stubborn Israel to suffer terribly in His efforts to get them to abandon their wicked ways and to bring them back to Himself ...
***
Amos 4:2-11 (NLT)
2 The Sovereign LORD has sworn this by his holiness: “The time will come when you will be led away with hooks in your noses. Every last one of you will be dragged away like a fish on a hook! 3 You will be led out through the ruins of the wall; you will be thrown from your fortresses, ” says the LORD . 4 “Go ahead and offer sacrifices to the idols at Bethel. Keep on disobeying at Gilgal. Offer sacrifices each morning, and bring your tithes every three days. 5 Present your bread made with yeast as an offering of thanksgiving. Then give your extra voluntary offerings so you can brag about it everywhere! This is the kind of thing you Israelites love to do,” says the Sovereign LORD . 6 “I brought hunger to every city and famine to every town. But still you would not return to me,” says the LORD . 7 “I kept the rain from falling when your crops needed it the most. I sent rain on one town but withheld it from another. Rain fell on one field, while another field withered away. 8 People staggered from town to town looking for water, but there was never enough. But still you would not return to me,” says the LORD . 9 “I struck your farms and vineyards with blight and mildew. Locusts devoured all your fig and olive trees. But still you would not return to me,” says the LORD . 10 “I sent plagues on you like the plagues I sent on Egypt long ago. I killed your young men in war and led all your horses away. The stench of death filled the air! But still you would not return to me,” says the LORD . 11 “I destroyed some of your cities, as I destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. Those of you who survived were like charred sticks pulled from a fire. But still you would not return to me,” says the LORD.
***
Consider also the story of Joseph in the book of Genesis and His suffering at the hands of his brothers and Potiphar's wife, and the suffering of the Children of Israel in the desert after their freedom from Egypt as God began to refine them as His people. There are many accounts of God's involvement with mankind that involved suffering. But if you study and see them from His perspective, in every one He had a good eternal purpose.
The nature of God's relationship with man since the garden of Eden was graciously changed through Christ - just as He had planned for it from the beginning - "God's secret plan" as Paul called it. We've had an opportunity to witness what He likes and dislikes and also how He interacts with us throughout the historical period of the Old Testament. The revelation of His heart and spirit reflected through Christ in the New Testament can help establish a different viewpoint from which to observe the person of our heavenly Father in the Old. This was the period before Christ's selfless act of grace when there was still a separation between God and man caused by man's sin. But even then His heart, desiring relationship with mankind was clear. And with sin now out of the way based on the opportunity to obtain forgiveness through Christ's grace, what would keep our Lord from interacting with us even more closely now given His deep and passionate love for each of us and the removal of the obstacle of sin that separated us previously? Without a doubt, we have the opportunity to experience an intimate relationship that far exceeds the faithfulness, love and satisfaction of any other if we're willing to invest ourselves in it - and it begins with trusting Him. The veil of separation from the Holy Place has been torn and we've been invited into His presence eternally, to know intimately and to be known by the very God who created us.
***
Jeremiah 29:11 (NLT)
"For I know the plans I have for you,” says the LORD . “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope."
***
Some sadly seem to see God as distant from their day to day lives and tend to seem comfortable with making judgments about His involvement with us on a personal level. But when it comes to our trying to make judgments about what God's character allows Him to do in our midst, I've learned to think that we need to be careful about our assessments based on what we can learn from His historical unchanging nature and unlimited wisdom.
Can anyone with man's limited capacity, understanding and perspective say that they truly know and understand our God's plans that are currently being enacted their lives or His reasons for them? Can we really challenge the sovereign Lord's unlimited perspective of anything including righteousness and justice? Given that He owns everything He's created including us, who can tell Him that what He's doing or not doing is righteous or just? His wisdom and perspective are far greater than our own and without our limitations. His intentions are always for our good so if there's any disconnect between what He says, does and allows, and my own personal understanding and interpretations regarding His character and ways, I've learned by experience to humbly submit that the error lies with me. I have to trust completely in faith that He is all things that He says He is and demonstrates. On the other hand, I also believe that in part, a lot of what we see in the world is not necessarily God's doing, but simply the result of men exercising their free will in evil ways that grieve God's heart. This is something that they have the freedom to do, but something that they will also one day have the inescapable responsibility to answer for.
I think there's also another cause for some of the suffering and evil we witness in addition to what men may do given their free will and the evil in their own hearts. The destructive nature of the sin that entered the world through Adam and Eve's disobedience can be blamed for much, but we can't forget that though he's been cast down, satan still has destructive power that he uses anywhere he's allowed access. He's not nearly as powerful as our God, but he does have power. We can witness the fact that he has power by an example in the Old Testament book of Job.
***
Job 1:12-19 (NLT)
12 “All right, you may test him,” the LORD said to Satan. “Do whatever you want with everything he possesses, but don’t harm him physically.” So Satan left the LORD ’s presence. 13 One day when Job’s sons and daughters were feasting at the oldest brother’s house, 14 a messenger arrived at Job’s home with this
And again in Job 2:7 (NLT)
"So Satan left the LORD ’s presence, and he struck Job with terrible boils from head to foot."
***
Now I don't think the story of Job is a common occurrence played out among God's people. The Lord had specific intention to demonstrate Job's faithfulness in the face of satan's direct challenge and the Lord righteously restored Job far beyond what was taken from him in satan's allowed attacks. But we can see that satan does have the ability to inflict damage from the examples in Job's life. Now even though satan is our Lord's enemy, ironically the Lord is able to use satan and his power in spite of himself to serve the Lord's purposes. Here are just a few minor examples from our brother Paul's writings:
***
1 Corinthians 5:5 NLT "Then you must throw this man out and hand him over to Satan so that his sinful nature will be destroyed and he himself will be saved on the day the Lord returns."
2 Corinthians 12:7 NLT "even though I have received such wonderful revelations from God. So to keep me from becoming proud, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me and keep me from becoming proud."
1 Timothy 1:20 "Hymenaeus and Alexander are two examples. I threw them out and handed them over to Satan so they might learn not to blaspheme God."
***
I'm pointing these things out to begin to help build the case for my assertion that I believe that we need to be careful in our judgments regarding what our Lord is or isn't responsible for, allowing or doing. To say that we see and judge anything the same way that He does could be a tragic misstatement without having had His revelation to have given us His view of any particular thing. Barring that revelation, through what He's declared and given us understanding of, it could be a falsehood or at the very least a self injurious act of self deception. My own life has been a litany of examples of both His involvement and His motives that have been brought so graciously and lovingly to my attention in order to grow my faith and to build my trust. But we'll get to that.
***
Isaiah 55:9 (NLT)
"For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts."
***
In truth, who among us created by the God who gave us life is in any position to judge His motives or whether or not He is just - even when it comes to taking life back from us? Who's wisdom, righteousness and judgment is equal to that of the sovereign judge, the omnipotent power that created anything that we can know as well as the rules that govern these things? Could any of us have lost perspective to such a degree that arrogance would lead us to question the unlimited God? Indeed, without giving it forethought in the past I have done this very thing. And without owing me any explanation given His sovereignty, He has at times responded in grace, demonstrating His great and undeserved patience with me - in order to adjust my perspective and remind me who He is, as well as who I am ... and am not.
***
Job 38:1-4 (NLT)
1 Then the LORD answered Job from the whirlwind: 2 “Who is this that questions my wisdom with such ignorant words? 3 Brace yourself like a man, because I have some questions for you, and you must answer them. 4 “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you know so much."
***
I don't believe that our God's desire and well documented passion toward whom He loves is diminished in any way by the advent of the New Covenant (Testament), or that He no longer pursues them with holy, righteousness, love and passion. He's proven it continually and in very passionate and awe inspiring ways. As He has been, He continues to be. So the books of the Old Testament teach us a lot about who He is - what He likes and what He dislikes as well as to what lengths He will go faithfully as the awesome Father to His children. I don't believe that He's angry with His people in this era of His available grace, but ... I don't believe that He's stopped correcting them or is any less directly involved in their lives either. What we presume to allow Him to do or to credit Him with - in our own minds, during His passionate parenting of us is sometimes dictated by certain terms that we tend to render subject to our own interpretation.
***
Deuteronomy 32:4 (NLT)
"He is the Rock; his deeds are perfect. Everything he does is just and fair. He is a faithful God who does no wrong; how just and upright he is!"
***
I think that perhaps since we know that God is always good, always righteous and always just, we may have a tendency to sometimes make assumptions about what we see happening in our lives and the lives of others based on our interpretations of what is good, righteous and just. The temptation often comes to use those interpretations to determine whether our God has any part in those events. But we're most often tempted to view those events from the perspective of our flesh and how it's affected, when in reality He's nurturing and training eternal spirits. So if the question arises as to whether God is involved in a particular situation, we may be tempted to make a judgment in our own hearts based on our interpretations of what His character allows against our flesh.
Our interpretations are a part of our perspective - the viewpoint we have regarding certain things in life (including life itself). But I think we can short change our God and create our own misunderstandings - consequently missing much, if we fail to recognize that His perspective is so much more vast - seeing and knowing the truth of all things ... and that it is perfectly and eternally infallible over our own. I believe that it's when we fail to see Him in the context of who He truly and powerfully is that we fail both Him and ourselves simultaneously - denying Him His rightful and desired place in our lives and denying ourselves the awe inspiring identity that He so lovingly intends for us as His children.
*** Deuteronomy 32:39 (NLT)
"Look now; I myself am he! There is no other god but me! I am the one who kills and gives life; I am the one who wounds and heals; no one can be rescued from my powerful hand!"
***
I heard someone say something once that resounded with my own thinking and confirmed something I feel quite strongly about. I believe that it has a lot to do with the failure of people to understand and to engage in their intended destiny - intended from before time began. Paraphrased in my own words it's this: The word of our Lord is not something that we can take snippets from and then expect to come away with a full and fruitful understanding of regarding how to live successfully in our God's presence. The Word of our God may have many chapters, and in our own way of describing it, many books. But from the beginning to the end it's one story and one book. You can't treat it casually - only performing hit and miss readings and expect to have a sound grasp of it. I personally believe that it's the most complete and comprehensive instruction manual - in reality a love letter, regarding the singularly most critical thing we will do in all of our lives from the moment we draw first breath - respond to God.
As the Lord's faithful, I believe that as we submit ourselves humbly and submissively to His direction and interaction through our acceptance of and faith in what He's taken the time to tell us, He engages with us as intimately as we allow and cares for us directly. He dotes on us and protects us as is His fatherly nature and we begin to find that He is without exception, the answer to everything. But the choice to submit and to actively engage with Him is always ours. In my own case, experiencing Him in life within the context of His word is what's allowed me to come to know Him to any true degree and to begin to understand where He was in some of the events of my own life. Words from a book came to life and became experienced reality based on my willingness to look directly at life in faith through the lens of what He's said and done in the history of His word. There have been points of provocation in my life that have caused me to look back on some of its events to see with some surprise that His hand had been steady in His care and training of me all along.
The key that seemed to dictate my ability to see and understand this was my willingness to make an effort to try to understand things based on His perspective and His definitions - the truth of things, and to accept them over my own in trust. In reflection and as a consequence I found that in my own life, He's not been silent or inattentive ... and He's not unaffected by the things that affect me. I just wasn't understanding, seeing or listening and I wasn't responding in faith to what He was doing perfectly and sovereignly from His perspective. His perspective is eternal and all knowing and His actions are based on those things - things that we of limited capacity sometimes struggle to grasp. I know that in earlier years that struggle kept me from moving forward in my relationship with Him and also from answering my friends' all important questions. I was stuck in a stagnant spiritual rut - inwardly and suspiciously holding my God at arms length until those questions propelled me to move and to begin to reexamine some of the events in my life from a different perspective.
***
Isaiah 46:9 (NLT)
"Remember the things I have done in the past. For I alone am God! I am God, and there is none like me."
***
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***
Now I don't think the story of Job is a common occurrence played out among God's people. The Lord had specific intention to demonstrate Job's faithfulness in the face of satan's direct challenge and the Lord righteously restored Job far beyond what was taken from him in satan's allowed attacks. But we can see that satan does have the ability to inflict damage from the examples in Job's life. Now even though satan is our Lord's enemy, ironically the Lord is able to use satan and his power in spite of himself to serve the Lord's purposes. Here are just a few minor examples from our brother Paul's writings:
***
1 Corinthians 5:5 NLT "Then you must throw this man out and hand him over to Satan so that his sinful nature will be destroyed and he himself will be saved on the day the Lord returns."
2 Corinthians 12:7 NLT "even though I have received such wonderful revelations from God. So to keep me from becoming proud, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me and keep me from becoming proud."
1 Timothy 1:20 "Hymenaeus and Alexander are two examples. I threw them out and handed them over to Satan so they might learn not to blaspheme God."
***
I'm pointing these things out to begin to help build the case for my assertion that I believe that we need to be careful in our judgments regarding what our Lord is or isn't responsible for, allowing or doing. To say that we see and judge anything the same way that He does could be a tragic misstatement without having had His revelation to have given us His view of any particular thing. Barring that revelation, through what He's declared and given us understanding of, it could be a falsehood or at the very least a self injurious act of self deception. My own life has been a litany of examples of both His involvement and His motives that have been brought so graciously and lovingly to my attention in order to grow my faith and to build my trust. But we'll get to that.
***
Isaiah 55:9 (NLT)
"For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts."
***
In truth, who among us created by the God who gave us life is in any position to judge His motives or whether or not He is just - even when it comes to taking life back from us? Who's wisdom, righteousness and judgment is equal to that of the sovereign judge, the omnipotent power that created anything that we can know as well as the rules that govern these things? Could any of us have lost perspective to such a degree that arrogance would lead us to question the unlimited God? Indeed, without giving it forethought in the past I have done this very thing. And without owing me any explanation given His sovereignty, He has at times responded in grace, demonstrating His great and undeserved patience with me - in order to adjust my perspective and remind me who He is, as well as who I am ... and am not.
***
Job 38:1-4 (NLT)
1 Then the LORD answered Job from the whirlwind: 2 “Who is this that questions my wisdom with such ignorant words? 3 Brace yourself like a man, because I have some questions for you, and you must answer them. 4 “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you know so much."
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I don't believe that our God's desire and well documented passion toward whom He loves is diminished in any way by the advent of the New Covenant (Testament), or that He no longer pursues them with holy, righteousness, love and passion. He's proven it continually and in very passionate and awe inspiring ways. As He has been, He continues to be. So the books of the Old Testament teach us a lot about who He is - what He likes and what He dislikes as well as to what lengths He will go faithfully as the awesome Father to His children. I don't believe that He's angry with His people in this era of His available grace, but ... I don't believe that He's stopped correcting them or is any less directly involved in their lives either. What we presume to allow Him to do or to credit Him with - in our own minds, during His passionate parenting of us is sometimes dictated by certain terms that we tend to render subject to our own interpretation.
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Deuteronomy 32:4 (NLT)
"He is the Rock; his deeds are perfect. Everything he does is just and fair. He is a faithful God who does no wrong; how just and upright he is!"
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I think that perhaps since we know that God is always good, always righteous and always just, we may have a tendency to sometimes make assumptions about what we see happening in our lives and the lives of others based on our interpretations of what is good, righteous and just. The temptation often comes to use those interpretations to determine whether our God has any part in those events. But we're most often tempted to view those events from the perspective of our flesh and how it's affected, when in reality He's nurturing and training eternal spirits. So if the question arises as to whether God is involved in a particular situation, we may be tempted to make a judgment in our own hearts based on our interpretations of what His character allows against our flesh.
Our interpretations are a part of our perspective - the viewpoint we have regarding certain things in life (including life itself). But I think we can short change our God and create our own misunderstandings - consequently missing much, if we fail to recognize that His perspective is so much more vast - seeing and knowing the truth of all things ... and that it is perfectly and eternally infallible over our own. I believe that it's when we fail to see Him in the context of who He truly and powerfully is that we fail both Him and ourselves simultaneously - denying Him His rightful and desired place in our lives and denying ourselves the awe inspiring identity that He so lovingly intends for us as His children.
*** Deuteronomy 32:39 (NLT)
"Look now; I myself am he! There is no other god but me! I am the one who kills and gives life; I am the one who wounds and heals; no one can be rescued from my powerful hand!"
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I heard someone say something once that resounded with my own thinking and confirmed something I feel quite strongly about. I believe that it has a lot to do with the failure of people to understand and to engage in their intended destiny - intended from before time began. Paraphrased in my own words it's this: The word of our Lord is not something that we can take snippets from and then expect to come away with a full and fruitful understanding of regarding how to live successfully in our God's presence. The Word of our God may have many chapters, and in our own way of describing it, many books. But from the beginning to the end it's one story and one book. You can't treat it casually - only performing hit and miss readings and expect to have a sound grasp of it. I personally believe that it's the most complete and comprehensive instruction manual - in reality a love letter, regarding the singularly most critical thing we will do in all of our lives from the moment we draw first breath - respond to God.
As the Lord's faithful, I believe that as we submit ourselves humbly and submissively to His direction and interaction through our acceptance of and faith in what He's taken the time to tell us, He engages with us as intimately as we allow and cares for us directly. He dotes on us and protects us as is His fatherly nature and we begin to find that He is without exception, the answer to everything. But the choice to submit and to actively engage with Him is always ours. In my own case, experiencing Him in life within the context of His word is what's allowed me to come to know Him to any true degree and to begin to understand where He was in some of the events of my own life. Words from a book came to life and became experienced reality based on my willingness to look directly at life in faith through the lens of what He's said and done in the history of His word. There have been points of provocation in my life that have caused me to look back on some of its events to see with some surprise that His hand had been steady in His care and training of me all along.
The key that seemed to dictate my ability to see and understand this was my willingness to make an effort to try to understand things based on His perspective and His definitions - the truth of things, and to accept them over my own in trust. In reflection and as a consequence I found that in my own life, He's not been silent or inattentive ... and He's not unaffected by the things that affect me. I just wasn't understanding, seeing or listening and I wasn't responding in faith to what He was doing perfectly and sovereignly from His perspective. His perspective is eternal and all knowing and His actions are based on those things - things that we of limited capacity sometimes struggle to grasp. I know that in earlier years that struggle kept me from moving forward in my relationship with Him and also from answering my friends' all important questions. I was stuck in a stagnant spiritual rut - inwardly and suspiciously holding my God at arms length until those questions propelled me to move and to begin to reexamine some of the events in my life from a different perspective.
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Isaiah 46:9 (NLT)
"Remember the things I have done in the past. For I alone am God! I am God, and there is none like me."
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