Those of you who are hurting, I hope you take comfort in the fact that God is hurting too because of your pain.  He never intended for life to be so hard for us...after all, we are His children, so of course wants to take our pain away.  Look at the story of Lazarus in John 11 and see how Jesus wept over the pain Mary and Martha felt over the loss of their brother.  Jesus felt our pain.....and he died so we could have a pain free life in heaven. 

God is always with you.  You do not need to carry the burden alone.  If you open you heart, you will see this for yourself.

 

We will never be able to answer or understand everything about God or His plans for our world, because His knowledge and wisdom are infinite and ours are extremely finite. Consider the difference between what you know and understand and what your two year old knows and understands and you can start to see this. Your two year old does not understand much about our world, right? This is probably how God sees us. Consider how sometimes you do things that make the two year old extremely upset, but you are doing it to prevent her from being hurt. A good example of this is if she was taking a fork and sticking it into a light socket. If you caught her in this act, you would probably scream and run at her like a crazed person due to your extraordinary fear that she is about to get shocked.

Here is another example...a few months ago I accidentally put my 60lb dog's flea meds on my 5lb cat. I recognized it immediately after and scooped her up and violently shoved her into the sink and began to wash her. She thought I was trying to kill her and she was fighting for her life. I was crying as I held her there and she clawed my arms and looked at me with fear in her eyes.

I know this is how God feels when He is working to save us, but His help is causing us pain and suffering. If you trust God and know that He is working for good, your eyes will become open and you will be able to see and peace will then began to fill your heart.

John 11:1-46 is the story of Lazarus. In this story, you can see that Jesus wept over our pain and suffering and you have to ask yourself, why did he do that when he knew what the outcome would be – Lazarus would be risen.
 
Here is my conclusion: Jesus wept over our pain and suffering, because it was very real to him. He wept because He knew He would also die and be risen for the forgiveness of our sins, yet we would still continue to be blind to our sin, which was/is the reason for our suffering. He had an unbelievable amount of understanding, which He tried very hard to convey to us, yet we could not understand. He wept over bringing Lazarus back to a world filled with pain and suffering, when He knew that Lazarus could be with God and feel no more pain or or suffering.  Jesus knew exactly what it was like to be with God and exactly what it was like to be on earth.  He cried for Lasarus having to come back and he cried for our ignorance.

The anger and frustration you feel in your heart because of your pain is preventing you from healing. Know that the injustice you feel is because you were made in the image of God, but also know and trust that He will take care of it; therefore, you can let it go.

 

Genesis 3: When God sent Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden, He promised them that from that point on life would be difficult.

When I tell my son about this story, he gets mad at Adam and Eve and tries to convince me that he would not have eaten the forbidden fruit. It makes him angry that THEY messed up our world and made life difficult for all of us. This is a good example of how we all think we are better than Adam and Eve; but of course, we are all the same and we would have all sinned against God. The forbidden fruit should be seen as sin, in general....or more specifically, the lack of trust in God.

Pain and struggle, occurs in our lives as part of God's promise. This is not because God wanted it. He wanted exactly the opposite, which is why he told them - “if you eat of this fruit, you will surely die.” So, we should not blame God when life is hard, but we should examine our lives to determine how we are going against God. The laws are there to protect us and set us free, not to bond us.

 

For Dad on Father's Day...

Dad,

Death is no longer a scary thing

But instead, it's a comforting place

Where I will someday walk with Jesus

And we will chat about this place

It is Jesus who lived a perfect life

And He died the death I deserved

So we could someday be with Him

Washed clean from all our sin

I pray you are up there waiting for me

Sitting beside Jesus and making Him laugh

I pray you know how much I love you

I pray all your pain is in the past

Please give hugs to James Daniel

And tell him how much he is missed

I know someday I will see his sweet face

And I can hardly wait to give him a kiss

Death is no longer a scary place

I'm looking forward to seeing your face

 

I want to continue the discussion on sin, because it is very important to expose this fully. It will be a hard discussion, but don't despair because there is a life-line at the end. We need to jump from Genesis to John 8:3-11 now, to expose our sinful nature a bit more. Please stay with me, this is important for you to understand.

John 8:3: The religious leaders, who are trying to catch Jesus doing something which He can be accused of, brought in a woman who they say was caught in the act of adultery. According to God's law, Jesus must condemn her to be stoned to death; however, they know Jesus' compassion for sinners, so they believe they have Him.

Question: Where was the other party in this adulterous act? We all know it takes two to tango!!

John 8:4-11: They ask Jesus what he thinks should be done with this woman according to the law of Moses.

When you read this scripture, you need to take note that it is the religious people who are judging and in their hearts they are killing, not only the adulterous woman, but Jesus too. They are using her crime to kill Him.

Jesus stooped down and wrote in the dust. Why do you think this detail is there? I believe it is there to show you that an eye witness is telling the story and to show the weight of this question on Jesus caused him to kneel down.

They continued to demand an answer from Jesus, so he stood and said, "All right, but let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone!" Of course, they had all sinned, so they quietly slipped away one at time until Jesus was left alone in the middle of the crowd with the woman. Jesus looked at the woman and said, "Where are your accusers? Didn't even one of them condemn you?"

"No, Lord," she said.

And Jesus said, "Neither do I. Go and sin no more."

OK, now this is what I wanted you to see. Notice the order of the two sentences here. Jesus did not say, I won't condemn you, if you no longer sin. He said,

1) I don't condemn you

2) sin no more

This is important because it shows how His grace is what changes us. He did not condemn the woman for her behavior, but instead He showed her grace and forgiveness. This is what changes our hearts and allows us to grow in our love for Christ.

What Jesus is showing is that when you get close to Him and truly understand what He has done for you, it becomes much easier to walk sin free and be close to Him. Consider this woman for an instant. What do you think His grace did for her? I imagine she was so grateful of His forgiveness that her heart filled with love and she no longer committed adulterous acts. What do you think?

Let's start by doing a deep study of the book of Genesis.  In Genesis 1 & 2, God tells us of his creation - heavens, earth, plants, animals, Adam and Eve.  He creates a paradise for Adam and Eve called Eden and places them there to care for the garden.  They are given only one law - do not eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. God told them, if you eat of this fruit, you will surely die.

In chapter 3, Eve is hanging out with the serpent and they are chatting about this one law God has given them.  The snake said to her, you will not surely die if you eat of this fruit, instead you will become like God.  He twists the truth and tells her this is why God does not want you to eat of it.

Here are my questions:
1) Where was Adam during this conversation? 
2) Wasn't Adam the leader? 
3) How should Adam have handled this as the leader?
4) Why were they trusting the serpent instead of God?

So, the original sin was two fold:
1) Adam was made to be the leader, but he was not leading
2) Eve trusted the serpent instead of trusting God

The price they paid for this sin was to be banned from paradise and separated from God.  This shows us what happens when we sin...we are sent away from God. He says to Adam, "you will return to the dust you were made from." Does this sound like heaven to you? Is God saying you can not be with me in Heaven (Paradise) because of your sin?

God is holy and can not stand to be around sin. Isaiah 64:6 says all of our rightious acts are like filthy rags.  This translates to menstral rags in Hebrew. Our God is all mighty and all powerful and He wants to be with us, just as any father wants to be with his child. The problem is we don't understand what our sin does to us or how bad it is. We are aware that we sin, but don't think it is all that bad...we are only human after all. 

Consider this...we were created to be with God and to be like God. Everything God created in Genesis was good. We make choices, which are bad and we separate ourselves from God. Yes, our nature is sinful, but we do not have to always act on our sinful desires. We have that option or choice. Our hearts are sinful, but as we get closer to God, He helps us to defeat these sinful desires. We need Him to be successful in defeating sin, but if you put your trust in Him all things are possible.  

God loved us so much that He sent His only son to die on the cross so we could be washed clean and again be with Him.  Because of what Jesus has done for us, we can be close to our father again.  Take His hand and let's work on this together.  I'm here to help you!