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Zephyr
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Faith In Times Of Trouble Part 1
I truly believe that the Gifts Of The Holy Spirit are not given lightly. I also believe that God wouldn’t help us with anything He thinks we can do ourselves; He is busy. That being said, one of the most heartrending questions people ask is “Why does a God of love allow suffering?” That very question must be the most damaging doubt in the history of humanity in search of our Creator. It deserves a sane answer.
All of us at one time or another, have either been greatly harmed by genuine evil, or have heard of someone else who has. Every time a person chooses hate and bitterness as an option in their lives, somebody gets hurt. Yet, when one person chooses to harm another, someone almost always starts with “How did God let this happen. It has only been since I have had to strive for my own faith that I have been able to see the value in struggling to break through to a deeper understanding of these things.
Because we have always been able to make the dangerous choice between good and evil, we really don’t notice what it is doing to ourselves and to others around us. Sin, for us here on Earth is actually normal, rather like breathing. All too often, sin seems to work to our advantage as well. When it does, we find we like sin; its only when sin works against us that we don’t like it so much after all. Remember, now that sin entered us through Eve, then Adam, making a choice that God warned them both not to make. They both made the terrible mistake of guessing that maybe God didn’t really mean what He said, or maybe He didn’t really know everything there is to know. That is a mistake that is much more dangerous than it might look. Now, let us remember whose idea it was in the first place and why. It was satan who came up with the idea that God didn’t really mean what He said, and that if Eve tasted the difference between good and evil, that she would be “…like God, knowing good and evil”. Genesis 3:5. Well, there’s an old-fashioned saying that goes “There’s a right way and a wrong way…” God certainly does know all about the difference between good and evil, but He also knows why it matters. I think that has a lot to do with why He allows suffering, and I think that has to do with why Jesus Christ freely chose to endure suffering Himself. You see, it is very unfair to ask anyone else to do something you won’t do yourself, and God is not unfair; satan, however is always unfair and always will be. It is satan’s ideas that lead to so much harm, and in fact, it was Adam’s free choice to go along with satan’s ideas that caused us all to have so much difficulty in this life. Adam wasn’t asked, Adam chose to take what God warned him to leave alone. That is why Faith is the most important Gift Of The Holy Spirit. It is Faith in what God is asking of us, Faith in what God is showing us, Faith in where God is leading us and why that will give us the ability to see the difference between good and evil, therefore allowing us to truly become Christlike, which is the whole goal of our Faith in the first place. Faith is the way that the wrongness of the choice Eve made becomes right.
This is part one, this is the foundation of why Faith is so important.
I truly believe that the Gifts Of The Holy Spirit are not given lightly. I also believe that God wouldn’t help us with anything He thinks we can do ourselves; He is busy. That being said, one of the most heartrending questions people ask is “Why does a God of love allow suffering?” That very question must be the most damaging doubt in the history of humanity in search of our Creator. It deserves a sane answer.
All of us at one time or another, have either been greatly harmed by genuine evil, or have heard of someone else who has. Every time a person chooses hate and bitterness as an option in their lives, somebody gets hurt. Yet, when one person chooses to harm another, someone almost always starts with “How did God let this happen. It has only been since I have had to strive for my own faith that I have been able to see the value in struggling to break through to a deeper understanding of these things.
Because we have always been able to make the dangerous choice between good and evil, we really don’t notice what it is doing to ourselves and to others around us. Sin, for us here on Earth is actually normal, rather like breathing. All too often, sin seems to work to our advantage as well. When it does, we find we like sin; its only when sin works against us that we don’t like it so much after all. Remember, now that sin entered us through Eve, then Adam, making a choice that God warned them both not to make. They both made the terrible mistake of guessing that maybe God didn’t really mean what He said, or maybe He didn’t really know everything there is to know. That is a mistake that is much more dangerous than it might look. Now, let us remember whose idea it was in the first place and why. It was satan who came up with the idea that God didn’t really mean what He said, and that if Eve tasted the difference between good and evil, that she would be “…like God, knowing good and evil”. Genesis 3:5. Well, there’s an old-fashioned saying that goes “There’s a right way and a wrong way…” God certainly does know all about the difference between good and evil, but He also knows why it matters. I think that has a lot to do with why He allows suffering, and I think that has to do with why Jesus Christ freely chose to endure suffering Himself. You see, it is very unfair to ask anyone else to do something you won’t do yourself, and God is not unfair; satan, however is always unfair and always will be. It is satan’s ideas that lead to so much harm, and in fact, it was Adam’s free choice to go along with satan’s ideas that caused us all to have so much difficulty in this life. Adam wasn’t asked, Adam chose to take what God warned him to leave alone. That is why Faith is the most important Gift Of The Holy Spirit. It is Faith in what God is asking of us, Faith in what God is showing us, Faith in where God is leading us and why that will give us the ability to see the difference between good and evil, therefore allowing us to truly become Christlike, which is the whole goal of our Faith in the first place. Faith is the way that the wrongness of the choice Eve made becomes right.
This is part one, this is the foundation of why Faith is so important.
