Sovereign, Wise, Loving and Good

Thanks to all who commented on the previous blog. I find this very cathartic and have come to the place where I truly value, as I think Paul did, being joined in “suffering for the gospel.”

2Ti 1:8 So do not be ashamed to testify about our Lord, or ashamed of me his prisoner. But join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God,

I think our joy in him, especially in suffering, glorifies him and displays his worth.

Of course, like others, when feeling the pain, I begin to ask the big eternal and universal questions about suffering and why God has planned such an economy of suffering in his story.

The question is asked, “Why would God allow human free-will, knowing that great suffering would result?” The answer is given, “God desires to be freely loved, just as anyone would and so the choice to love him, or to refuse to love him, had to be granted.”

The second question that should be asked is, “But were not we, who love him, chosen to do so, before the foundation of the world?”

Eph 1:4 Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. 5 God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.

Does not our chosen-ness negate our free-will and therefore nullify the previous argument for its necessity?

No. God’s sovereign choice never diminishes the value of our choice to love him or our responsibility when we refuse to trust him, regardless of our inability to comprehend this fact.

I will always have chosen to trust and love God and it will always matter that I did. It matters even now, perhaps most of all when he has allowed circumstances necessary for his plan, his glory, necessary for my eternal good, that can only be seen as negative in and of themselves.

I still have free will. He will not accomplish his will in me apart from mine.

Php 1:6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

He will do this through – in conjunction with - my willingness to see it completed.

Php 2:13 for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.

Choosing to trust and love him because I want to, because he proves himself sovereign, wise, loving and good has always mattered and it always will.

Complaining Up

I have seen the rock face of scripture bleed life-giving water until I could not help but overflow with what God was speaking through it. There is no better “high” than being thrilled with all that God is saying, especially for one who begged him to speak as a teen.

It has been weeks since I felt overflowing. I sip trickles here and there. I cling to that rock face and beg for water, but nothing fills my soul to overflowing. I cannot get enough of Him. At least not right now. I said that I would not blog for any other reason than that.

This is depression. Perhaps it is the appropriate emotional response to loss. It is accompanied with doubts concerning the goodness of God, the love of God and the trustworthiness for God, things I could never “preach” from the pulpit, but deep waters we all go through.

We’re tempted to pity the depressed. This of course is poison. Pity is feeling sorry for someone and relating to them on that basis which only feeds the illness rather than raising the expectation that it will pass and it will. No one can live here, at least not for long. No sane person would want to.

For now, I have questions without answers, pain without resolve and a hope that is so hard to maintain it takes all my strength. The one thing I need is faith. Faith to believe the promises and the future that God has in store for his children. Faith that he gives and enables me to live, but in reality, what other choice is there but to believe and to live it despite how we may feel. Feelings are not our God. God is.

Job felt it.
Job 30:21 You turn on me ruthlessly; with the might of your hand you attack me.

Jeremiah felt it.
Lam 3:7 He has walled me in so that I cannot escape; he has weighed me down with chains. 8 Even when I call out or cry for help, he shuts out my prayer.

David felt it.
Ps 69:2 Deeper and deeper I sink into the mire; I can’t find a foothold. I am in deep water, and the floods overwhelm me.

Paul felt it
2Co 1:8 We were crushed and overwhelmed beyond our ability to endure, and we thought we would never live through it.

Perhaps depression is just an avenue for faith, a time in which the expression of faith sounds different.

Ps 142:2 I pour out my complaints before him and tell him all my troubles.

I think this is where to go with it. Not to everyone, perhaps a little with a few, but mostly we ought to “complain up” as Tom Hanks said in Saving Private Ryan

This is still prayer, still faith, just the faith and the prayers of the hurting who hope that One will do something about it, show his compassion, express his care by a means that will actually comfort and restore faith, make it easier to believe in a good, loving, trustworthy God until Our faith is sight. And He will.

1Thes 5:23 May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 24 The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it.