What to do in a World of Sadness - Purity 961
Purity 961 02/07/2023 Purity 961 Podcast
Purity 961 on YouTube:
Good morning,
Today’s photo of a multicolored ribbon stretched out
in front of a view of the Hudson River from the vantage point of Henry Hudson
Riverfront Park in Hudson NY comes to us from my phone’s photo archives and an unnamed
AFSP volunteer who captured this scene back on September 15, 2018 at the
Columbia-Greene Out of the Darkness Walk.
The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention seeks
to help prevent suicide and to support the community of people who have been
directly affected by suicide. During the
Walk’s ceremony of remembrance and support people are encouraged to tie a
colored ribbon to a large ribbon that acknowledges their loss or their part in
the community of support.
The AFSP’s Out of the Darkness ceremony gives people
a way to grieve, to heal, to remember their loved ones, and to encourage others
to get help when they are contemplating suicide. If you have thoughts of suicide help is a
phone call or text away. Call 988 or Text the word “HOME” to 741741to get
help.
Well, It’s Wednesday again, and don’t worry I am not
contemplating suicide this morning but I have to be honest and say that there
were many times in my life where I was in deep despair and wanted to die to
stop the pain and thought about taking my own life. However, I was too afraid to die because I must
have realized that even though I was suffering that ending my life was not the
answer. I was afraid of death and the
unknown more than facing the pains and frustrations of living, I guess. So. I lived to face another day and it’s a good
thing I did because it eventually led to my finding salvation in Christ, and a meaning
and a purpose for my life.
And that purposed is to let people know that their
lives are of immense value because God Himself, through the person of Jesus
Christ, came to earth to die in order to save us and to give us a new spiritual
life that goes from here to eternity.
My looking back to 2018 for the photo of the day this
morning was inspired by one of the Freedom in Christ course participant’s comments
last night who admitted that seeing the suffering that is happening in the
world today sometimes fills him with sadness and frustration to the point that he
doesn’t feel like reading the Bible or going to God in prayer. The suffering that he sees in the world and
in the various people he encounters in life makes it seem that he is in a world
of sadness and it cause him to question God’s goodness, presence, and power.
The hurt, pain, and suffering he sees causes him to feel sad and angry at the
suggestion to draw close to God.
Which is exactly what the spiritual forces of
darkness would want us to do! Satan and demons seek to destroy us and their
goal is to do anything to keep us from going to the Lord or from helping others
to find life in Christ. Deception is
their primary strategy, to make us believe a lie about God or about ourselves
to separate us from Him.
So in this man’s case, the enemy is causing him to
acknowledge the suffering of the world and to doubt God’s goodness or power
because of the evil, pain, and brokenness he sees in the world. Because of the suffering he sees he is a
little jaded as the idea of a good God while there is this world of sadness
doesn’t compute.
However, there are several lies and misconceptions
and basic ignorance of life as it really is that comes into play to view the
world in this way and to cause us to separate ourselves from God.
So what do we do in this world of sadness? People
are really suffering! This is not good!
No it is not.
However, there are some things we need to realize about reality that
will put things in their proper perspective and that could help us to see beyond
the veil of the “world of sadness.”
Please forgive me, for this might be a little too
real or seem harsh in light of the questions asked about suffering which really
amount to “Why do things have to be this way?”
But if we are going to accuse God of not being good, we need to see the
truth.
1. We didn’t make ourselves.
God is creator. He makes us and He will call us into
eternity. The life we have is a gift and our purpose in life is to be in
relationship with the Creator and to represent Him. Whether we are representing the Lord or not,
one day we will die. Our suffering on earth will end someday.
However, our eternal destiny and possible eternal
torment, will be determined by whether or not we make peace with God by putting
our faith in Jesus.
We have no rights to our life. God gives it and He
takes it away. But He offers us new life to all who trust in Him.
2. The world is broken by sin.
God’s original plan for mankind was Eden and
paradise was lost when Adam and Eve chose to disobey the Lord’s one commandment
because they were tempted to believe that that God was holding something out on
them and they chose to act independently of Him, causing their spiritual death
and separation from God. Since the Fall,
every person born is spiritually dead and lives independently of God choosing
to do good or evil according to their own wills and desires.
Much of the evil in the world is the evil that men
do. Death, disease, and natural disasters
are consequences of the Fall.
Why is their suffering in the world? Sin changed the
very nature of reality and we will live in the chaos of this “world of sadness”
until Christ returns. Scripture
indicates that suffering will end, when God creates a new heaven and a new earth
and all who put their faith in Christ will experience it.
As harrowing as suffering may be in the here and
now, it is a temporary condition that will be alleviated for all who enter God’s
kingdom through Christ.
So when we see suffering in the world, we should
draw close to God because He will one day prove His goodness by taking it all
away for those who love and follow Him.
When we see people suffering, we need to share this
hope and encourage them to turn from their worldly ways and find peace with
God.
In light of the ultimate reality of God’s kingdom
coming to earth, death has lost its sting as the faithful live for ever and those
who rebel and reject the Author of life, goodness, and love will get what they
deserve, God’s wrath.
That might seem harsh, but God gave us life and when
we waste it in selfishness and by joining in with the spiritual forces of
darkness who would accuse the Lord of not being good, when the truth is that everything
that is good comes from God, we have no leg to stand on – literally – if you got
legs, God gave them to you!
Rather than lamenting over the suffering of this
world, we should recognize the existence of the good in the world and rejoice.
Seeing the world as a “world of sadness” is to believe the lie of the enemy because
there is FAR more good in this world than bad but the enemy doesn’t want you to
see that because if we were to acknowledge the goodness in the world, and to
count our blessings daily, we would love the God who provided it and we would praise
His holy name. We world abandon the world’s ways for His wisdom, because we
would know that He is good and to follow Him is life, love, and peace.
So open your eyes and see that God is good, even
with the pain, even with the suffering in this world. If you trust the Lord put your faith in Him,
one day your suffering will end, forever, but until then you don’t have to
choose to suffer. Instead you can choose
to see the good and thank God for it. You seek to change your ways that lead to
personal pain. You can seek comfort and
help those who are suffering by telling them the truth about the God who is
willing to save them and to one day take away all their pain.
When we live in the truth of the Creator God who
loved His creation enough to die for those who would believe in Him, our eyes
should be open the ultimate reality that God has for us and we should rejoice.
Therefore, keep walking and talking with God. Renew
your mind with the truth of God’s word that gives us the wisdom to navigate through
this world that is falling apart. Trust in Jesus and know that your new life
has already happened and that you no longer live in a “world of sadness”
because He has overcome the world.
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Today’s Bible verse comes to us from “The NLT Bible
Promise Book for Men”.
This morning’s meditation verses are:
Matthew 12:34-37 (NLT2)
34 You
brood of snakes! How could evil men like you speak what is good and right? For
whatever is in your heart determines what you say.
35 A
good person produces good things from the treasury of a good heart, and an evil
person produces evil things from the treasury of an evil heart.
36 And
I tell you this, you must give an account on judgment day for every idle word
you speak.
37 The
words you say will either acquit you or condemn you.”
Today’s Bible verse is a discourse from Jesus Christ,
himself, on how our words will reflect the condition of our hearts and warns of
the judgement that is to come that will consider every word we speak.
In another passage of scripture, Jesus tells us that we will
know His disciples by their fruit and obviously from today’s verses we can see
that one of the things that we can use to gauge whether someone is good or evil
is the words we speak.
And I hate to say it biut, any argument, philosophy, or
comments that one would make that doubts, denies, or contradicts God’s word are
not just controversial or a diverse point of view, they are evil.
If the things we say would cause someone to sin or to not to
put their faith in Christ, those words will one day be rightly judged as evil
as they will be seen to be evil and unloving as they convinced ourselves or
others from trusting and following God.
Treason are acts are words that seek to go against or destroy
the government and is usually punished by death. And the words we speak, will show whether our
hearts are for God’s kingdom or against it, so as the rapper Ice – T said of
his album’s – Yes, you have freedom of speech, but watch what you say be cause
your words can and will be used against you, and in the final judgement they
will reveal what you really believe in your heart and they either condemn you
or acquit you.
So speak the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. encourage
people to trust and obey the Lord who loves them, and show the love of God to everyone
with the things you say.
___________________________________________
As always, I invite all to go to mt4christ.org where I
always share insights from prominent Christian theologians and counselors to
assist my brothers and sisters in Christ with their walk.
Today we continue sharing from A.W. Pink’s “The
Sovereignty of God.”
As always, I share this information for educational
purposes and encourage all to purchase A.W. Pink’s books for your own
private study and to support his work. This resource is available on
many websites for less than $20.00.
THE
SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD
By ARTHUR W. PINK
CHAPTER FIVE
THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD IN REPROBATION continues
Once more we would
avail ourself of the language of Calvin: “But, as I have hitherto only recited
such things as are delivered without any obscurity or ambiguity in the
Scriptures, let persons who hesitate not to brand with ignominy those Oracles
of heaven, beware of what kind of opposition they make. For, if they pretend
ignorance, with a desire to be commended for their modesty, what greater
instance of pride can be conceived, than to oppose one little word to the
authority of God! as, ‘It appears otherwise to me,’ or ‘I would rather not
meddle with this subject.’ But if they openly censure, what will they gain by
their puny attempts against heaven? Their petulance, indeed, is no novelty; for in all ages there have been impious and
profane men, who have virulently opposed this doctrine. But they shall feel
the truth of what the Spirit long ago declared by the mouth of David, that God
‘is clear when He judgeth’ (Psa. 51:4). David obliquely hints at the madness of
men who display such excessive presumption amidst their insignificance, as not
only to dispute against God, but to arrogate to themselves the power of
condemning Him. In the meantime, he briefly suggests, that God is unaffected by
all the blasphemies which they discharge against heaven, but that He dissipates
the mists of calumny, and illustriously displays His righteousness; our faith,
also, being founded on the Divine Word, and therefore, superior to all the
world, from its exaltation looks down with contempt upon those mists” (John
Calvin).
In closing this
chapter we propose to quote from the writings of some of the standard
theologians since the days of the Reformation, not that we would buttress our
own statements by an appeal to human authority, however venerable or ancient,
but in order to show that what we have advanced in these pages is no novelty of
the twentieth century, no heresy of the ‘latter days’ but, instead, a doctrine
which has been definitely formulated and commonly taught by many of the most
pious and scholarly students of Holy Writ.
“Predestination we
call the decree of God, by which He has determined in Himself, what He would
have to become of every individual of mankind. For they are not all created
with a similar destiny: but eternal life is foreordained for some, and eternal
damnation for others. Every man, therefore, being created for one or the other
of these ends, we say, he is predestinated either to life or to death”—from
John Calvin’s “Institutes” (1536 A.D.) Book III, Chapter XXI entitled “Eternal
Election, or God’s Predestination of Some to Salvation and of Others to
Destruction.”
We ask our readers to
mark well the above language. A perusal of it should show that what the present
writer has advanced in this chapter is not
“hyper-Calvinism” but real Calvinism,
pure and simple. Our purpose in making this remark is to show that those who,
not acquainted with Calvin’s writings, in their ignorance condemn as ultra-Calvinism that which is simply a
reiteration of what Calvin himself taught—a reiteration because that prince of
theologians as well as his humble debtor have both found this doctrine in the
Word of God itself.
Martin Luther in his
most excellent work “De Servo Arbitrio” (Free Will a Slave), wrote: “All things
whatsoever arise from, and depend upon, the Divine appointments, whereby it was
preordained who should receive the Word of Life, and who should disbelieve it,
who should be delivered from their sins, and who should be hardened in them,
who should be justified and who should be condemned. This is the very truth which
razes the doctrine of freewill from its foundations, to wit, that God’s eternal
love of some men and hatred of others is immutable and cannot be reversed.”
John Fox, whose Book
of Martyrs was once the best known work in the English language (alas that is
not so today, when Roman Catholicism is sweeping upon us like a great
destructive tidal wave!), wrote: “Predestination is the eternal decreement of
God, purposed before in Himself, what should befall all men, either to
salvation, or damnation.”[1]
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