Today, God loves me. I mean, what else can you say. My team won last night. The player I was cheering for won the tournament, my stocks have gone up last week, I had three good meals, last night was a good night's rest. My children have not called me with any problems. My wife got to her destination with no car problems. It is all good. God must love me.
Last week, God was not my friend. Last week, the elections did not go as I had hoped. My doctor did not make it all better with one shot. The bills for my insurance came due. No one volunteered to help us at our office. The sermon I gave seemed pretty bland to me and to the people who heard it. It was not a good week. God did not love me that week.
Sometimes I think that is how many of us evaluate our relationship with the Holy. It is a very, very old standard by which lots of people have used to evaluate their relationship with God. If things are going very well, and we are prospering then we must be doing good, and God is blessing us. If things are going poorly and we are struggling, then we must be doing something wrong, and God is punishing us. It is a measuring stick that is even used in the Old Testament. If the king was faithful, then God blessed him and the king prospered. If the king was unfaithful, then God did not bless and the king suffered defeat and opposition.
It is the criteria that was debated directly in the book of Job. It was the philosophy that the disciples asked Jesus about when the man born blind came to Jesus. Who sinned to make this man blind? His parents or He?
But what fascinates me most about us is how rapidly we change our opinion about what God thinks about us depending on the one event or one week. We can go from thinking that God loves us to God has it in for us in a couple of hours. We can go from thinking that we are blessed to the conviction that God ignores us in one moment. Maybe we could at least try to get a broader picture and consider the whole events of a year or two years.
We might want to try to steady ourselves in the basic affirmation that indeed God loves the world and all who are in it and so God loves us all the time regardless of what happens to us. That God loves us and is working for the good of all creation in the events of the created order.
But if that is a stretch for us then certainly we can remind ourselves as the Sinatra song says, "Life keeps turning in cycles, first there is laughter then tears. So I think I'll stay round and see what tomorrow brings." And the whole story has not been told. One cannot evaluate the book until you get to the end. We cannot make the final decision until the final event has happened. There is always the possibility of something happening that will change our verdict.
It is a journey, an adventure, and without ups, downs, mysteries, challenges, surprises and joys it would not be nearly as much fun.
Paul Brandeis Raushenbush: A Chaplain's Advice on How to Be There for Our Troops
Shira Hirschman Weiss: The Wandering Jewish Artist: A Portrait of Moshe Givati (PHOTOS)
Josh Seefried: What Anti-Gay Chaplains?
So if God gave them the same gift he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I to think that I could stand in God’s way?”
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
I thought god lover the sinner, but hated the sin?
Yeah, tell that to the innocent children dying in Syria and suffering from starvation in many other nations.
Shalom
So I turned away from Asphaltia and worshipped Lot - the god of urban renewal. All he demands is a small fee and a ticket. I'll probably rot in in an underground car park for eternity, but it's a small price to pay for happiness in the here and now.
Jesus became flesh and by means of his death for our death and his resurrectiforce we have a NEW quality of life.. The Father still continues that union of love with his Son. We experience that divine love in THEIR continued relationship, as we are in Jesus. Don't forget its HIS righteousness that allows the union. (Once we confess our sins, and seek his righteousness)
The Holy Spirit is the means that this union is continued as all in this union, share in the divine eternal life. What a gift !
Shalom
That is why you have free will,
but free will is something you have to practice.
And free will is what every tyrant has feared.
It is no wonder that so many claim it must not exist.
So many today will claim they are strong, for they have many great guns.
many great armies and navies. Space technology and robots.
i see them as all weak, and utterly powerless.
The one thing they dont have, which without they have nothing is control.
Becuae each and every person has free will if they choose.
So today they will simply gwet rid of you, for they are the gods now.
They have passed judgement these peoples of titles.
Let no plan go untouched. True they will likely destroy you.
Shortly after they begin to ask why they didnt just listen?
Arrogance.
If God does not change, does His love for us change? And if God doesn't change, do we change and does our love and commitment for God change? Can we expect the same results from God, while our love and commitment to God keeps changing? And so if the results from our relationship with God are always changing, is it up to God or up to us? Does God really need to change to meet our needs or do we need to change to meet His requirements? Are we being honest, when we blame God without examining our own relationship with God? Is our relationship with God good enough to get anything from Him?
- http://www.deathandlife.org/bible101.html
Events come and go, like the eternal tides, and we ride them like ladybugs on a log.
Nothing or no one in the universe cares. Now that's my idea of fun!
This is a good article to write about, thank you for your effort.
Everything in this quote is right on except the last word. "fun": really fun? God creates so we can have fun? This is making a God in our human image which religion does 99.99% of the time.
Life is a journey of greater and greater awareness with serial experiences which gives us time and a universal feedback system most call karma, which Jesus called what we sow we reap.
This develops the soul to exist in this "upward ladder of awareness" meaning in those many mansions that Jesus stated existed.
God is not about loving us or not loving us, the Source of all that is, is love, as perfect infinite awareness is perfect love.
The future is bright meaning greater light and love and creativity and bliss as we are made in the image of God. the human ego is soooooooo deceptive it has made God in its image.