How Would God Know? Does the Most High Know Anything?

After the Holocaust ended, German civilians were taken to Buchenwald concentration camp to see the atrocities that happened there. Over and over they were heard saying, "We didn't know." Now, because of the internet and social media, we have no excuse for ignorance [on abortion]. The hands of America are covered with blood...perhaps her eyes and ears are covered as well.

The above quote is from a woman named Kelly Clinger who is a warrior on behalf of the most helpless in our society: unborn babies. She wrote this in 2012 upon learning that late-term abortions were actually allowed up until the day a baby would otherwise be born. I can barely help but be overwhelmed with the evil of it all especially as news has broken that the abortion industry doesn't just murder babies; it sells their tissues for profit. So I prayed to God for understanding and the Holy Spirit reminded me of Psalm 73:

"I envied the arrogant
    when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.
They say, "How would God know?
    Does the Most High know anything?"
When I tried to understand all this,
    it troubled me deeply
till I entered the sanctuary of God;
    then I understood their final destiny."

There is a day coming when the wickedness of this world will pass away like smoke and blow away like a vapor. God has won and will reveal the extent of His total victory through Christ who came to redeem the world and His children. As Psalm 73 also states:

"They are like a dream when one awakes;
    when you arise, Lord,
    you will despise them as fantasies."

I pray that all would repent of their wickedness and that the Church of Jesus Christ would stand powerfully at the risk of losing everything for the sake of those who cannot stand. It was what Jesus did for us when we were without hope and without God in the world.

The Power of Hope in a Faithless Age

I just wrote this letter to a friend, in part from my own failings and struggles, but with the desire to build others up who have the same questions that I have struggled through:

Christians have the burden of loving and not judging. The non-Christian has no desire not to judge as they have no desire to live according to the love of Christ. God forbid we start to sound the same. Christians (on the Right AND Left) tend to turn to the state to legislate morality more than we turn to Jesus to change our own hearts. The Lord gave me a question last Friday night during my bible study wherein I asked everyone to label what they considered the worst sin to be. I had answers ranging from rape, to causing others to sin, to murder. Then I asked them, "When you see others committing those sins does it bother you more than your own sins?" What do you think? We want to judge others so badly. We demand JUSTICE for their failings and then as soon as we screw up we beg for MERCY!

Take a fresh look at the bible. It is disingenuous to believe that it has been translated badly. There are literally tens of thousands of the earliest Apostolic and prophetic writings from antiquity that have been found which bear witness to the faithfulness of translations. Certainly there are very short segments that are difficult to translate correctly but the Book in its entirety is a marvel of faithfulness. Is God not powerful enough to preserve His word? Are His people so unfaithful that they should want to politicize it completely as so many of us modern Christians seem to have done? I don't think so. There are things more lasting, more eternal and more important than our fading political realm. As Peter said when Jesus asked if the Apostles would leave Him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life!" THAT is our message. Eternal life. In the end, no one will care about our current state of politics but everyone will care about which side of Jesus they fall upon. Jesus held high the Scriptures (yes, even those "awful" passages from Deuteronomy and such). He even cited the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah to say that if they had been commanded to repent they would have done so (insinuating that they were less wicked than the Pharisees). There is no evidence to show that the words of scripture have been so perverted as to be rendered untrustworthy. The root of our distrust is our own fallibility and cautiousness towards our own race. But God's power and grace supersedes our meager abilities to sin. He has preserved the meaning of Eternal Life (Salvation) for people of every tribe, tongue and nation to hear. Let us not try and remove His glory from our lives by questioning His very power to be King over creation.

What is my legacy?

My body is something I’m proud of, not because I’ve made it into anything special, but because God created it to be this way and to sustain me in this life regardless of how well or poorly I treat it. I am amazed looking at it to notice the story it tells of my life. I see the red moles and my first thought is of my father who had many of them. I am part of his legacy. On the other hand, my freckles carry on more of my mother’s legacy as I received them from her. I can see where the sun has most greatly had an effect on me: over my shoulders and collar bone, on my arms starting below my shoulders and extending down to my fingers.

My own personal story is most clearly etched onto my face. That is why my eyes continue to be drawn back to it. I have a scar under my chin, grooved by four consecutive face plants. My eyes are the gateway to my soul, but the light horizontal lines that express my interest and lie across my forehead, the vertical lines between my furrowed brows that express consternation or deeper thought and the semi-circle smile lines around the edges of my lips expose the character of it.

I am thankful for what I see. There is intelligence behind those eyes. Thoughtfulness. A soul that is precious to its Maker. I look into it and see faint reflections of God’s character. Love, though often poorly expressed; joy, occasionally obscured by my false expectations of life; peace, often rejected by outbursts of anger; patience, undercut by my savior complex; kindness, bent to the point of breaking when tested; goodness, denied to others for their lack of it; gentleness, flaring into anger when frustrated; faithfulness, dropped when I break my word for a “better” offer; self-control, sacrificed for instant gratification. But deeper to my hypocrisy (a comfort for the knowledge that I have standards), is the Spirit of my Maker. The Animator of my body. The Breath that gave it life.

When I take it all in - my father, my mother, myself - I see a story of faithfulness intricately woven throughout the generations. I am part of the vast story my heavenly Father is seeking to tell. His glory is being revealed through the hypocrisy of it. Where my failures have abounded, His grace has abounded all the more. Where my deeds have brought down my eyes, He has lifted up my head. That is the testament of my body. It should have returned to the dust from where it came by now, but it has been sustained purely by grace and love until the infinitely finite purpose for which it was given is exhausted on that last day. So within my eyes and the latent energy within me I see the promise of better things to come. I have the expectation of a body that no longer pains me from sitting in one position for an hour; a mind that doesn't tire from contemplating glory for a few minutes. Moles, freckles, scars and all, I am my heavenly Father’s legacy.

Owe no one anything, except to love one another

"Owe no one anything , except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law." ~Romans 13:8
Do you realize that if we loved one another with all our heart, soul, mind and strength we wouldn't need money? We would always constantly be on the lookout to serve every need of one another and no one would lack anything, most of all compassion. My mind is blown with the thought that God, Himself, as Jesus, loves us in that very manner. He loved His own Father so greatly that He gave up His very life to save His lowly children, thereby proving that His love for sinners extends to every throb of the heart, deepest extent of the soul, loftiest consideration of the mind and greatest feat of strength! Love is the only eternal currency and Jesus used it to fully pay the debt of our failures before God. And this is how Christ paid the debt of love for us:

"And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross." ~Colossians 2:13-14

To even speak of God's love is to debase it

It is well known that God, in His divine providence, chooses to entrust the most essential, lovely and eternal truth of His nature to the most dejected, ugly and ephemeral of all agents; namely, mankind. It is thus the most incredible of doctrines that, of all the forms Christ may have taken to reveal Himself, He chose the form of mankind to do so. How Satan must have licked his chops when he saw his greatest Adversary descend from His throne in heaven in the weakest form of man; a form which Satan had enjoyed almost free reign over from the time of Adam until the Great Coming. What a great mystery revealed in Isaiah 40:

And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed,
    and all flesh shall see it together.
    for the mouth of the LORD has spoken."
A voice says, "Cry!"
    And I said, "What shall I cry?"
All flesh is grass,
    and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.
The grass withers, the flower fades
    when the breath of the LORD blows on it;
    surely the people are grass.
The grass withers, the flower fades,
    but the word of our God will stand forever.

What greater mystery could there be than for the very Creator of the universe to come in the most humble form of His creation, the very form of which was said to be passing away as a mist when the sun arises? The flesh of Christ was imbued with the very essence of divinity so that every curse and blessing in the scriptures would be fulfilled in Him! He would bear both the curse of mortal flesh through nails and a crown of thorns, and the blessing of eternal life through His resurrection into a glorified body! As Acts 2 states:

"Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, He Himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death He might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery."

It is good, Lord, that before our lips could ever utter praises to you, you knew them all completely. Who are we that you are mindful of us? Our flesh is not of your substance; how can we worship you? Our very words are base and defiled and fully incapable of praising your name; yet you accept them. They are fleeting yet you make your throne upon the praise of your children. You love our very frames and find pleasing our humble and tiny offerings. What can we give that you have not already given to us in full?

Thank you for your great love for us! Thank you for placing eternity into our hearts; for knowing us from eternity past; for engraving our names upon your hands and your heart; for writing your character onto our hearts! Such things are too great to comprehend. Eternity is not long enough to praise your holy name!

Love is a gracious and patient teacher

Godly love is impartial. By its very nature it is unearned. God lavished it upon me while I was still a sinner and His enemy. The expectation is that in having received such love I would now graciously extend the same to others. I'm still learning how to do this and I find myself regularly falling into the trap this world offers of loving only those who can return it to me. When falling short of a Godly standard I express this self-seeking "love" in many ways: Giving gifts to those who can give gifts in return, being kind to those who are kind to me, blessing those who bless me...

There was a woman in a recent class of mine who I found to be quite condescending. She displayed a "know-it-all" attitude at times and had a terrible sense of timing in asking questions. She was also very awkward in expressing certain personal details about her life. So how did I respond to her? I condescended in return (she deserved it), I ignored her knowledge (I'm much smarter), I scorned her questions (they were so obvious), and I laughed at her awkwardness (she shouldn't be talking of such things). In all these instances, she proved herself to be more righteous than I.

All of this has left me in a pensive state, considering how best to honor my Lord and my God. I keep coming back to three truths that prove the greatness of Jesus' love for me.

1) The greater the giver of love, the greater the love.

2) The less deserving the recipient of love, the greater the love.

3) The greater the expression of love, the greater the love.

I must extrapolate that the greatest expression of love must come from a completely perfect benefactor, received by a completely imperfect beneficiary, and expressed in a completely excellent manner. God is perfect love. Apart from Him there is nothing in me that is good. He could express His love for me in no greater way than to die in my place on the cross.

I was able to humble myself to the point of approaching the young lady and asking her forgiveness for my lack of love, but the bad taste from my conduct is still in my mouth. Thankfully, God's grace has given me permission and time to learn. The power of His patience is unsurpassed and not dependent on the excellence of my conduct. Jesus just keeps loving me, showering me with His grace, expressing it through his kindness. There is no better teacher.

Death and Life are in the Power of the Tongue

I love how the bible uses language from the earth to describe deep spiritual truths. We've lost a lot of understand as many of us no longer work outside but consider the below excerpts from the Proverbs 18:

Proverb 18:
"4 The words of a man's mouth are deep waters;
    the fountain of wisdom is a bubbling brook."

"21 Death and life are in the power of the tongue,
    and those who love it will eat its fruits."

A "bubbling brook" sustains life in a desolate land just as loving words can water a parched soul. This "water" also helps to grow the fruit of the soul. Hateful words grow bitter fruit and loving words grow sweet fruit. Thus, out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks, but the corollary is also true: From the desire of the heart the ear receives.