![]() ![]() What is this strange language? The text drives our understanding. We must be persuaded that all His hand does, whether it brings blows or blessings, is good because He loves us. No man can restrain His hand or demand an answer of Him, “What have you done?” But I want to biblically demonstrate some of God’s purposes in afflicting us to help us to submit to His hand. What I want to do is bring an answer to why God would inflict pain upon His own children. Who am I to stand in His defense? Part of our problem is our depravity that we cannot see or submit to this great sovereign hand and His glorious purposes in our lives, even when they are difficult. I want to explain the pain God brings, not in defense of God for He needs no defense. “Thus saith the Lord,” trumps “Thus saith the preacher, the teacher, or the Christian celebrity.” ![]() Therefore, if the Bible says that God will afflict us from time to time and that He will bring loving blows that wound us, we need to believe it even though our nature resists it. Your knowledge of God must come from Him and God’s knowledge has been revealed to us through the person of Jesus Christ and the testimony of Jesus Christ is the Bible. According to their theology the Christian should never suffer, especially by the hand of God.īut your understanding of God must not be based upon what some television preacher or bestselling book that promises prosperity says. They believe if they are good and work hard enough God will bring prosperity and they will not suffer in the least if they only believe. Their understanding of God does not allow for this. Many in this country don’t even believe that. Oh no, we serve a very different kind of God, a God that may allow affliction but He will not be the one administering it. The stereotype we have of God in this country does not allow for Him doing these kinds of things. God giving His children the bread of adversity and the water of affliction? That God’s hand would bring a blow? We don’t want to believe in a God like this. These words sound so strange to the 21st American Christian’s ear. 20 And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher.Ģ6 Moreover, the light of the moon will be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day when the Lord binds up the brokenness of his people, and heals the wounds inflicted by his blow. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |