ISSUES WITH GOD

Here are some of my most difficult issues that I wrestled with before surrendering to God. When I decided to take that step the one thing I committed to was accepting that I will not have all the answers in this life, but that I would trust God with things I couldn't understand and not allow my issues to stop me any longer from pursuing a relationship with Him. It's been 13 years and He has answered many, many questions I thought I would never have the answers to. As I have grown to know who He truly is, He has proven Himself faithful over and over again. I don't need to have all the answers, I just need Him...

Every person has their our own ideas about who God is, what He is like and how you get to heaven. We draw our conclusions from our life experiences, our view of the Christians we see and how they act (sometimes hypocritical), the church we may have grown up in, other people's ideas and experiences, and our culture. It can all be pretty confusing! We are influenced by everything around us and the last place we look is in the Bible, this is God's very Word to us so that we CAN know Him and what the Truth is about all of it! Because I was a bad kid, a rebellious teen and lived a life I knew was full of sin, when bad things happened in my life I thought it was God punishing me. I thought God hated me and wanted to make my life miserable. I had no idea how much God loved me even when I hated him! Even when I was living a sin filled life,  (which was just hurting myself!), He loved me and never stopped pursuing me. When I began to understand His love for me personally, that love transformed me, it renewed me, and it restored to me a life worth living- I had a New Life in Christ! God is the manifestation of Love and He is also Just. Sin is breaking God's Laws and the penalty is death. That's how serious sin is! But the Love of God is far more powerful than we can ever imagine. God who is Holy, Just, and perfectly Righteous, took on human flesh, and came to die a brutal torturous death in order to pay our sin debt. Why would He do that???  That's how much He LOVES YOU!  Wrap your mind around that...When you really get that, you want to live for Him and die to selfish ways.

It is impossible to know who God is and what He is like without reading His Word. Here is some of what His Word says: 

​Jeremiah 31:3 The Lord appeared to us in the past, saying: “I have LOVED you with an EVERLASTING LOVE; I have drawn you with UNFAILING KINDNESS. 

Romans 5:8   But God demonstrates his own LOVE for us in this: While we were STILL sinners, Christ DIED for us. 

Psalm 86:5 You, Lord, are FORGIVING and GOOD, abounding in LOVE to all who call to you. 

John 3:16-17 16 For God so LOVED the world that He gave his only Son that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send His Son into the world to CONDEMN the world but to SAVE the world through Him. 

Hebrews 8:12  For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more. 

1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is FAITHFUL and JUST and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

The truth is we cannot do it. We need to surrender, give God a willing heart and He does the changing. It is a life long process of change, we will never be perfect, we will always struggle with sin but God's Spirit will help us see our sin and it will bother us. As we pray for God's help the power of the Holy Spirit will change our desires for these things and help us overcome them.

 After Paula died I knew I needed to mend my relationship with God but thought I had to stop living the only way I knew how. I knew I was living a sinful life, the party life, drinking, smoking, sex outside of marriage. I knew it was wrong in God's eyes and until Paula died I didn't care. Once I lost her I knew if I ever wanted to see her again I needed to get things right with God. At that point I thought I had to stop sinning. Well who can do that??? Who wants to??? Most of us see sin as "Fun".  We don't see it for what it is...Serving the devil. And that only leads to death. Sin destroys us. Sin has power over us, we are slaves to it. Instead of God having His good and perfect will done in our lives, Satan is having his will done. He wants us messed up, addicted, and hopeless. Look around you, he is good at what he does! The enemy has one agenda- to stop us from coming into a true relationship with God.  He is the father of all lies and ONE of his biggest lies is that you have to be living a perfect life without sin before you can start a relationship with God.  Don't wait until you live a perfect life to start your relationship with God, give Him your willing heart and sincerely seek Him with all your heart, He will do the rest. 

How good is good enough and good compared to who? If I compare myself to the girl who steals from the people she loves for drugs or the guy down the street that beats his wife, or someone who commits murder, I'm great! But when I compare myself to a Holy God who is perfect and to His Holy Law, I'm not looking so good anymore. Do you know what I mean? His Law shows us how Righteous and Holy He is and how far we are from Him. It shows us how far from perfect we are and how desperately we need a Savior.

 What is the measurement of how good is good enough to get into heaven? How many of your good deeds make up for your bad ones? Simply put, it doesn't work that way. When you break the law and you go before the judge he doesn't look at all the good things you have done in your life, he looks at the law you have broken and gives you the punishment you deserve. The same goes when we break God's laws. We are going to be judged according to what we have done wrong, not by what we have done right. This is where the good news comes in--GREAT NEWS really! God in His GREAT love for us does something pretty remarkable- He leaves His throne in heaven and comes down in Human form to take the punishment for us-Jesus, God in the flesh, took the punishment for us.  This is what LOVE is!  If we accept, believe, what He has done on our behalf we will not face the penalty for our sin, Jesus already paid for it. That's what the cross is all about. Salvation isn't about what we do, it is all about what He has done for us. We are getting in by Faith alone in Christ alone. He has done it all. His last words on the cross were "It is finished". Done.

Ephesians 2:8-9 says "For it is by Grace you have been saved, THROUGH FAITH, not of yourself, it is a GIFT of God, NOT BY WORKS, so that no one can boast"​.

​Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.

I am going to tell you something that I had NO CLUE about- JESUS LOVES THE SINNER!!! I knew I was a sinner but I didn't know that Jesus' entire PURPOSE for being born was to save-RESCUE- sinners like me and you! Every person sins-everyone. As a matter of fact Jesus spent most of His time with the poor and despised, tax collectors (stealing from people), adulterers, prostitutes, lepers, and the demon-possessed. He brought healing and new life to all that believed. I was also surprised to learn that Jesus came up against the religious leaders with their self-righteous attitudes and rituals. They considered themselves above the "common sinner". Jesus placed the sinner above those that considered themselves righteous. Check these verses out!

 Romans 5:6
You see at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. (We are all ungodly!)

Romans 5:8
But God demonstrates His own Love for us in this: while we were STILL sinners Christ died for us.

1 Peter 3:18
For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God

Titus 3:4
But when the Kindness and Love of God our Savior appeared, He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of His mercy.

1 Timothy 1:15-16
Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners-of whom I (Paul) am the worst. But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, (he was killing Christians) Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on Him and receive eternal life.

I blamed God for every terrible thing that happened in my life. It got to the point where I thought He hated me and I hated Him right back. What I never thought about was Satan. We live in a broken world now. This is not what God created. God created the garden of Eden where our every need was taken care of by God. God did not create cancer, starvation, murder, or rape. These things are a result of sin, of man doing things his wicked way instead of God's way. We were created to live forever and we will, we will either live forever with God in heaven or apart from Him, but we will all live forever. Satan has an agenda, to bring everyone he can into an eternity of torment, the complete absence of God. John 10:10 says that Satan comes to steal, kill, and destroy. 1 Peter 5:8 says your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. We see this all around us. Sickness, disease, eating disorders, depression, addiction, divorce, murder, hate, human trafficking, abuse in every form, war, all of it is from the pit of hell. This is NOT God's design for us but He has a solution for it! The Cross. It's at the Cross where everything is made right again. Jesus not only paid our penalty for sin but He set us free from the power it has over us. He also rose from the dead on the third day and conquered death for us. Believer's will live forever in paradise, the way God originally intended. As long as we are still here on this earth we will experience the things of this broken, messed up world but when we have Christ we can trust that He is with us in anything we face, and we know that this life is not the end for us!

Here is the amazing, awesomeness of God- when you choose a relationship with Him, He promises to bring something beautiful out of any circumstance, IF you are HIS.  He says in Romans 8:28 ALL things work together for good for those who LOVE God and are called according to His purposes.​ When we go through trials and suffering it produces in us a desperate need for God.
Although suffering is awful, it brings us to an intimacy with God that brings about a great strengthening of character, compassion for others, preparation for more intense trials and most of all a longing for eternity that helps us to let go of this life just a little bit more. This world is not our home, we are just passing through.... 

But God doesn't just leave it at that. His word tells us that He WILL put an end to all evil FOREVER. No one knows the day or the hour but there is much prophesy that speaks of all the signs that will be visible leading up to that day. As a matter of fact, we are seeing very specific signs right now, today! Some say why is the Lord so slow in ending evil? ! 2 Peter 3:9 Tells us that He is not slow in keeping this promise, as some understand slowness. Instead He is patient, not wanting anyone to perish but everyone to come to repentance. It is His desire that every person find their way back to Him to spend all of eternity with Him in paradise forever. He is waiting patiently for the very last heart to turn to Him.  

A lot of the Christianity we see here in America isn't the real deal and you don't have to be a Christian to see that. You have TV preachers manipulating money from disadvantaged people in the name of Jesus. People in the spot light taking a stand against the sin of others while living a secret life of sin themselves. Flocks of people being led by Pastors living a double life. Churches full of people living lives that don't look all that different from the rest of the world, unwilling to take on the slightest discomfort to truly follow Christ. Christianity that mirrors the rest of the world in its lust for financial gain and drive for the American dream, living lives of dysfunction and defeat. Is this what it means to be a Christian?  I found myself assuming that God was like what I was seeing in some Christians and thought the whole thing was pretty messed up! 

Christians aren't perfect and there will never be a perfect church here on earth and that's not an excuse for what we see today in the American church, but don't judge who God is by broken Christianity. 

​Christianity at it's core is sacrificial Love. Allowing Jesus Christ to Love others through you. We pray that others will see the Truth about the need for a Savior and also see Christ in us and desire what we have. It is not our job to showcase someone else's sin, but focus on our own walk with Christ. There are many true Christians to look to that display a genuine relationship with Christ. They will stand out like a city on a hill. They will be like salt to the earth making you thirsty for more of Jesus.