Natural Disasters

Genesis 12:10 NIV

 Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe.

What Should You Think About The Natural Disasters In Our World?

Recently we have had a slew of wildfires in our state that have devastated parts of Northern California.  Before that massive hurricanes struck the Caribbean.  In Spain also are terrifying wildfires.  Malaria continues to plague the tropical parts of our world.  A large earthquake struck Mexico just a few months ago and despite all the technology at our disposal, natural disasters are not preventable.  They come with fury and increasing frequency.  What is a Christian response to the natural order that often reveals the chaos a sin soaked universe generates?  Can a theology of natural disasters be developed that will help us understand what God is doing in this world?

There are a large number of natural disasters described in the Bible.  Some are clearly attributed to God and His judgment upon people.  The flood of Noah’s time was caused by God because of the wickedness of all the people of the world.   The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain.  So the Lord said, "I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth — men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air — for I am grieved that I have made them."  But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. (Genesis 6:6-8 NIV)  God’s anger with the rebellion of Korah who issued a call for Moses to be removed as leader of Israel resulted in a giant sinkhole that engulfed Korah and his entire clan.  As soon as he finished saying all this, the ground under them split apart and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them, with their households and all Korah's men and all their possessions.  They went down alive into the grave, with everything they owned; the earth closed over them, and they perished and were gone from the community. (Numbers 16:31-33 NIV)  When the Assyrians attempted to conquer Jerusalem, the Lord sent a plague that decimated their huge army.  That night the angel of the Lord went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the next morning — there were all the dead bodies!  So Sennacherib king of Assyria broke camp and withdrew. He returned to Nineveh and stayed there. (2 Kings 19:35-36 NIV)

This certainly does not exhaust the list of times in the Bible God is said to bring about a natural disaster because He decided to punish large and small groups of people.  Yet many times no explanation is given as to why certain natural disasters occurred.  Famines forced both Abraham and much later his son Isaac and then later still Jacob his grandson to leave Palestine and move to Egypt to avoid starvation.  A great storm pummeled the ship the Apostle Paul was on and forced everyone on board to swim for their lives when the violence of the waves broke the boat apart.  Both the prophets Amos and Zechariah mention a great earthquake that hit Israel during the reign of Uzziah, king of Judah.  However, no commentary is given as to why it took place.   The words of Amos, one of the shepherds of Tekoa — what he saw concerning Israel two years before the earthquake, when Uzziah was king of Judah and Jeroboam son of Jehoash was king of Israel. (Amos 1: 1 NIV) Volcanoes blew their stack, earthquakes struck, devastating floods took place and plagues raged through cities during the time the Scriptures were being written but the Bible is silent about the vast majority of these natural disasters.  Great and terrifying storms struck several times as Jesus and the disciples tried to make it across the Sea of Galilee by boat but Jesus never gave a reason why they took place.

Jesus made two striking statements regarding the horrific sorts of circumstances people face.  The first came in response to the speculation that was taking place regarding two prominent tragedies that were being widely discussed in Jerusalem.  Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices.  Jesus answered, "Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way?  I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.  Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them — do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? (Luke 13:1-4 NIV)  Jews, just like people all over the world, are prone to speculate that some sort of karma or vengeance of God brings about tragic disasters.  Those who are struck down somehow had it coming.  Christ though poured a bucket of cold water on all such fire starting.  Sinning is universal and the comparative evaluation of sins is mere guesswork for us.  We cannot draw a straight line between sinning and the tragic events of life.    Christ does say next however that any natural disaster should lead all those who hear of it to repent themselves of their own sins!  I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish." (Luke 13:5 NIV)  That is a strange twist on the longstanding karma theology.  A natural disaster or tragic event does not at all point out the sins of those who suffered from the tragedy but rather serves as God’s mirror so that we face our own sins and turn from them immediately.

Jesus’ second statement regarding tragic events came as a result of a question one of his disciples asked Him.  A man born blind was spotted by the group and Christ was asked, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" (John 9:2 NIV)  Jesus gave a most fascinating answer.  "Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life. (John 9:3 NIV)  The effect of this reply is to flip on its ear everything we normally think about tragic events.  The pagan world looks at disasters and wonders what went wrong.  What was so bad about all those people that they were punished?  Christ tells us to never speculate about what sort of sins led to the crushing blows people face.  He invites us instead to look about and watch for how God will reveal Himself to us when something that seems bad happens.  Natural disasters are a mirror that reflects back to us our sins and also a window that makes it possible for us to see God doing something marvelous.  Imagine the man born blind barking at God for his blindness when all along God had a plan for making that blindness a way of letting the world see how good and lovely Christ is.  The Lord insists that when you see something that you assume is bad, prepare yourself for God in His love to meet you.

There are three common reactions to God opening up the window to see Him when a natural disaster strikes.  The first is to ask Him why He did it.  This of course is almost always an accusation that God is evil or vindictive.  The second reaction is to question why He did not do a better job of protecting people from evil.  It takes God off the hook as far as making bad things happen but challenges His authority in this universe.  Who really is in charge?  If God can’t prevent evil, then someone or something else must be making all the calls in life.  Karma…  Luck... Satan…  The third reaction is to wonder what God might do to salvage things.  In other words, all eyes should be on how the Lord will make a bad situation somehow turn out all right.  Some might call this the Pollyanna approach but let us consider two Scriptures that shed light on what we know about the tragic events that take place in life.

In of all places, the book of Lamentations gives us the first of two principles to consider when it comes to disasters and tragic events.  Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both calamities and good things come? (Lamentations 3:38 NIV)  In other words, nothing comes to us that God has not decreed.  Whether we call it a tragedy or a blessing, God decides what will transpire.  He oversees everything that happens to us and is the gateway through which every circumstance must pass.  Whether it is God’s use of the Babylonians to wreck Jerusalem or the decree of the Persian ruler Cyrus that permitted the Jews to return to Israel, it is the Lord who is in charge.  Listen carefully to God’s insistence when He spoke to the Israelites just before they entered the Promised Land.  "See now that I myself am He!  There is no god besides me.  I put to death and I bring to life, I have wounded and I will heal, and no one can deliver out of my hand.” (Deuteronomy 32:39 NIV)  If the ultimate events in time are life and death, then the Lord God Almighty who calls Himself YHWH controls what happens at the highest levels of existence.

A second principle often goes overlooked when it comes to disasters and tragedies and at the risk of seeming to minimize the pain and sorrow such events bring, it is the overriding principle of all of life.  And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28 NIV)  In any and every situation, God makes everything turn out well for those who have put their hope in Him.  Even those who give their lives for the sake of Christ will find that God will make things right and good for them.  Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst. The sun will not beat upon them, nor any scorching heat.  For the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd; he will lead them to springs of living water.  And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes." (Revelation 7:16-17 NIV)

Not everyone will believe that God is able to transform the worst calamities in history into blessings for those who suffered from them.  It seems like an impossible dream that our Lord could take even the most horrific of tragedies and rework them altogether into joy and happiness!  Yet the Cross and Resurrection is our measure of what God can do for us if we trust Him.  Listen to Mary Magdalene weeping as unbeknownst to her she comes across Christ having been raised from the dead.  Then the disciples went back to their homes, but Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus' body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.  They asked her, "Woman, why are you crying?"  "They have taken my Lord away," she said, "and I don't know where they have put him." At this, she turned around and saw   Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.  "Woman," he said, "why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?"  Thinking he was the gardener, she said, "Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him." (John 20:10-15 NIV)

That is how every one of us is on this side of a tragedy or disaster.  We see it all from the perspective of death and suffering but are mostly ignorant or oblivious to how transforming the life of God is.  In just a moment, Mary Magdalene went from great despair to ecstatic joy solely because she found that Jesus was alive; alive having been dead.  Jesus said to her, "Mary."  She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, "Rabboni!" (which means Teacher).  Jesus said, "Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet returned to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, 'I am returning to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'" (John 20:16-17 NIV) Disaster turned into victory…the greatest in the history of mankind.  It takes trust to believe that God will make every disaster a triumph of life over death for those who put their hope in Christ to save them.  We must trust something.  We can trust that a bad and painful turn is just that, bad and painful or that it will be transformed by Christ into a good and wonderful that will make the bad and painful fade from memory.  Trust is up to you.  Life is up to God.

In You, Not From You

Have you stopped to wonder what God might be doing with you?  It is much different, wondering what you might do for God.  They seem to be interchangeable...the one is the other but they aren't.  We fuss greatly over whether or not we have been of use, whether we have made enough of our opportunities; utilized our talents and resources well.  God owns the cattle of the thousand hills and is the architect of all we see in life; at what point does He fret over the part we play in His plans?  It is an absurdity to think that God wrings His hands at the waste of time and energy He has put into us.  If the Cross means anything, it is that God has thoroughly saved us and He did it Himself without our help.  He can raise the dead, build an army and put together a congregation at any moment He wishes.  We are not needed at all to do a single thing to make sure His work is done.  Salvation is God developed in you, stripping you of Sin and the damage it has done and recreating your life in its entirety so that you can be in union with Him.  At every point, whether you are praying or preaching or helping someone in need, that work is being carried out in you and if you join in the rebellion of Adam by rejecting Christ here or there, you simply make it a miserable process for you and those about you.   When Abraham up and left his home and made his way west and south, he did not know what would come of his trip...he just was certain God would take him where He wanted him.  This life in God is like that.  We cannot know just what Christ is doing with us and how it really is going at any given moment.  All we can do and all we are to do is simply obey the Lord at every turn.  As we do so, we can have confidence that we will arrive at the destination of God's choice and be who He wants us to be.  In the end, the work will be done whatever it was supposed to be.

Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money."  Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.  Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that."   James 4:13-15 NIV

Poor Me

Numbers 20:2-5 NIV

 Now there was no water for the community, and the people gathered in opposition to Moses and Aaron.  They quarreled with Moses and said, "If only we had died when our brothers fell dead before the Lord!  Why did you bring the Lord's community into this desert, that we and our livestock should die here?  Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to this terrible place? It has no grain or figs, grapevines or pomegranates. And there is no water to drink!"

Have You Been Given a Fair Deal?

During one of my trips to Russia, I was shocked to discover as I was about to board the plane back to the U.S. that I didn’t have my ticket with me.  This of course was not the end of the world.  The airline could simply look on the computer and find that I had purchased the ticket for that flight and reissue me a ticket and boarding pass.  That is what I thought would happen.  Apparently the Russian airline did not keep records of tickets issued in a data base and I was going to have to purchase a new ticket if I was going to board the plane.  Terribly annoyed, I gathered my luggage and trudged over to the customer relations window and waited to meet with a service representative.  By the time someone was able to speak with me, I missed my flight.  What was worse, the airline people said they could not find any record of me buying a ticket with them and that if I wanted to fly out of Moscow, I would have to purchase a new ticket.  What was I to do?  It seemed incredibly unfair for me to have to pay for a ticket I had already bought so I sat in the airport and stewed, waiting for someone with more authority than the ticket clerks to help me.  In the meantime, all the other flights leaving Moscow for London where I was to transfer were booked.  I began to feel sorry for myself.  “Why did I have to pay extra money to fly home?”  “Why wasn’t God helping me?”  “How come I had to miss my flight?”  “What sort of airline treats its customers so unfairly?”  I finally called the school where I had spent two weeks lecturing and complained to the director about my terrible situation.  He told me to hire a cab and come back to the school and figure out what to do there.  Now I had to spend fifty dollars for a cab ride back to Moscow.  What a joke!  What a waste of money!  I just knew the cab driver would overcharge me too!  Where was I supposed to stay when I got back to Moscow?  What would I have to pay for a hotel room?  Why did this have to happen to me?  It wasn’t right that I sacrificed so much to come and teach in Russia and then to have to put up with this.

Have you ever felt sorry for yourself?  Of course you have!  You have been mistreated and misunderstood.  You haven’t had enough money to get what you wanted or take the sort of trip you would like to take.  So-called friends have ignored you and taken advantage of your kindness.  You don’t get paid what you deserve.  Everyone else gets to relax while you have to keep working.  Why did you have to get sick now?  How come your car had to break down where it did?  Why did you have to get hit or your house robbed?  The work you do isn’t appreciated.  There is so much that isn’t fair in life!  How come God doesn’t take better care of you?

Perhaps you can relate to Ahab and his attempt to buy a field near his house.  He went to the owner of the field with a quite reasonable proposal.  Ahab said to Naboth, "Let me have your vineyard to use for a vegetable garden, since it is close to my palace. In exchange I will give you a better vineyard or, if you prefer, I will pay you whatever it is worth." (1 Kings 21:2 NIV) Ahab, although king of the land, did not use his political power to force Naboth to sell to him.  He nicely and respectfully tried to work out a deal with him.  However, to King Ahab’s surprise and dismay, Naboth refused to sell the land.  When nothing Ahab said could convince Naboth to sell his vineyard, King Ahab literally went back home to his bedroom and sulked.  Ahab’s wife later found him in his bed, refusing to eat because he felt so sorry for himself.

This is a brilliant example of how self-pity operates.  Almost always it is a product of lust.  Many mistakenly think of lust as merely some sort of misguided sexual desire but it is much more than that.  Lust as we see it in the Bible is the wreckage of desire.  “I want this now and I must have it.”  It could be anything that becomes an object of lust.  I want someone to respect me.  I want to be appreciated in this home.  I want that job.  I want a better income.  I want to buy that car.  Desires are built into you by God and they are important to your personality.  However, a corrupted desire is rooted in the unwillingness to wait for God to satisfy the desire His way.  When King Saul tried to kill David because of his jealousy over David’s popularity, his longing to kill David flowed out of his lust for respect.  Jacob lusted after his brother Esau’s place in the family and betrayed his father and his brother by trying to wrest it away from Esau by deceit.

When a lust is not fulfilled, when we don’t get what we want and we are not willing to wait for God to satisfy the desire we have in His way within His time frame, self-pity is the result.  I want this and I want it now.  If I don’t get it, I feel sorry for myself and become either angry or depressed.   She must love me.  He must treat me fairly.  They must respect me.  I deserve to have a better salary.  Lust, the unwillingness to let God work things out for me so that my desire can be fulfilled in the way He wants, leads to self-pity which can disconnect me from God and replace God’s joy and peace with misery.  The great sin of Job’s friends was that they pushed him into self-pity.  Rather than encouraging Job to patiently wait for God to sort things out for him, they prodded Job to become dissatisfied with God by insisting the Lord was punishing him for sins he knew he had not committed.  The more they accused Job of hidden wickedness, the more Job’s dissatisfaction with God grew.

The great lie of Satan which he first tried with Eve is that God is not good enough to make your life right.  This festering discontent with the Lord bubbles up into bitterness, frustration and depression.  It saps us of our moral strength and incites rebellion against God.  Listen to how Satan sowed the seed of discontent in Eve.  "You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman.  "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil."  (Genesis 3:4-5 NIV)  “God is keeping you from something good and it is not fair the way He is holding you back.”  Lust refuses to accept God’s plan for how to have one’s needs met.  Self-pity is our response to a lust that poisons our heart before we engage in outright rebellion against God.

There are two principles that every single person must be taught and if they are embraced, the peace of God can be attained.  The first is: God is in complete control of your circumstances.  Satan isn’t.  Luck isn’t.  Others around you are not.  God is in complete control of your circumstances.  The second is:  If you are in love with God, then every circumstance in life is good for you.  Why would you feel sorry for yourself if you know that God, who loves you with unlimited affection, is in charge of your life and will make it perfect in every way if you just trust Him?  Consider how Joseph from the Old Testament long ago discovered that these two principles were true.

When he was seventeen, Joseph’s brothers, out of jealousy, (or more precisely because of lust) sold him into slavery.  For twelve years his life wasted away first as a slave and later it got even worse after he was unjustly sent to prison.  Everything that happened to Joseph was unfair, at least from a human standpoint.  He did not deserve to be a slave and certainly it was not right for him to be in jail.  But you must remember and it needs to be certain in your mind, God is in complete control of your circumstances and everything that happens to you will make your life better.  At the age of twenty-eight, the Lord put Joseph to the test.  Into the prison where Joseph languished came two former employees of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.  One was Pharaoh’s chief baker and the other his cupbearer.  Both were sent to prison because of Pharaoh’s dissatisfaction with them.  On the same night, each had a dream that baffled and troubled him.  Joseph asked them to tell him their dreams because as Joseph put it, “Do not interpretations belong to God?”  After Joseph explained to the cupbearer what the Lord was telling him through his dream, Joseph asked him to try to get Pharaoh to release him from prison.  He added this bit of commentary about why he was in jail.  For I was forcibly carried off from the land of the Hebrews, and even here I have done nothing to deserve being put in a dungeon." (Genesis 40:15 NIV)

In this one simple statement, Joseph showed that he had not yet learned to live by the two principles.  He did not believe it was God who brought him to prison and he did not see any good coming out of it.  As a result, Joseph had sunk into self-pity.  What Joseph did not realize and perhaps could not know was that the Lord was preparing him for the great task that only someone with tremendous humility and unbending loyalty to God could perform.  To make such a person, the Lord had to put him through slavery and unjust imprisonment and in it all learn to trust the Lord and stay loyal to Him no matter what.  Joseph was being prepared to become second in command of Egypt and bring the knowledge of God to that pagan nation.  All arrogance and self-pity and lust had to be squeezed out of Joseph before the Lord could entrust him with this responsibility.   Finally, after two more years in jail, Joseph was ready to trust God in any and every circumstance and believe that no matter what he faced, the Lord was good.  How do we know Joseph learned that the two principles were true?  When Joseph was finally freed by Pharaoh and Pharaoh put him in charge of running the country, his brothers who had sold him into slavery came to Joseph begging for food to feed their starving families.  Rather than making his brothers pay for what they had done to him, he reassured them that he did not blame them for selling him into slavery but rather was thankful God let him go through what he did.  "So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God. He made me father to Pharaoh, lord of his entire household and ruler of all Egypt.” (Genesis 45: 8 NIV)  Later, after their father died, Joseph reassured his brothers once more that God put him in Egypt for good both for him and many others including his brothers and their families.  But Joseph said to them, "Don't be afraid. Am I in the place of God?  You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” (Genesis 50:19-20 NIV)

How much happier and more peaceful we would be if we could just see things like Joseph did.  Everyone around us would be uplifted by our approach to  life.  We would be encouragers rather than discouragers.  We would lift up the spirits of those who are feeling down and be like a breath of fresh air everywhere we go.  There is no reason to feel sorry for yourself if you know that Christ is in charge of your life.  If Christ could take the brutal beatings and barbaric crucifixion He suffered and turn it into salvation for you and the rest of the world, then He can and will work out everything we face with perfect care.

The Mountain

Psalm 125:1 NIV

Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion,

which cannot be shaken but endures forever.

How Does Your Faith Look?

Imagine a mountain of any sort.  It could be snow-capped, rising above the peaks of a dozen other mountains or a hill that stands out in flat desert wasteland.  The mountain can have a city sitting upon it or be a barren rock where few plants grow.  What does that mountain signify to you?  Does it trigger memories from your past or create an image of what you would like your life to be?  What do you think of when you look at the mountain and how does it impact your senses?  Are you drawn in a mysterious way to the mountains or are they frightening because of their immensity and the danger many mountains present to those who climb them.

Many important events happened on mountains in the Bible and mountains often symbolized theological themes in the Bible.   Abraham had one lasting memory of a mountain, Moses several.  Peter, James and John never forgot what they experienced on a mountain and someday it will be a mount upon which our Lord will return.  Perhaps what makes a mountain so captivating is its great power and steadfastness.  Mountains simply are not moved.  Another quality of the greatest of mountains is their endurance.  The Psalmist has this in mind when he compares the believer who puts His faith in God to Mount Zion. Those who trust in the Lord are like Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forever. (Psalm 125:1 NIV)  The next verse gives a brilliant picture of how God protects us.  As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people both now and forevermore. (Psalm 125:2 NIV)

Like Mount Zion, the person who trusts in God lasts forever but just as the mountains surround Jerusalem, God guards His people and protects them.  So we have the believer being like a specific mountain, Mt. Zion and the Lord being like the range of mountains around Jerusalem which contains Mt. Zion.  We are like a mighty mountain, the Bible tells us, if we put our trust in God.  But even more importantly, it is the Lord who is a mountain of protection for His people.  We will pause here and consider these two points carefully.

Many have lost their way because they get these two declarations confused and miss the point of them altogether.  Our faith is not in our faith.  It is in Christ who saves us from all that Sin creates.  If your faith is in your faith, you will certainly be shaken because at some point your faith will be shaken.  Your faith can be knocked down and wrecked by trials too great for you but your salvation is not dependent on your faith.  It is dependent on God whose salvation it is.  Like what happens when a great wave of the ocean strikes you, you can find yourself knocked off your feet spiritually by someone who talks you out of what you believe about God and convinces you that you are naive to think Christ can save you.  A book you read might be so persuasive in its arguments against the presence of God that you can doubt His existence.  Some person you trusted who built up your faith in Christ may commit a terrible sin and suddenly you wonder if Christianity itself is true.  If your faith is in your faith, you can become like a house built upon sandy ground that falls apart when a horrific storm beats against it.  Consider these examples of faith in faith.

When the Apostle Peter boldly proclaimed that even if all the other disciples fall away from staying with Christ, he never would, Peter was showing his faith in his faith.  Peter declared, "Even if all fall away, I will not." (Mark 14:29 NIV)  We know of course that Peter did fall away and his boast comes across as pure bluster to us but at the time, Peter was supremely confident that he could and would if necessary die with Christ if Jesus’ dire prediction came to pass.  He had faith in his faith.  It is one thing to have faith in God, another altogether to have faith in one’s faith in God.

James and John angrily called for Christ to let them pray for fire to come down from heaven and destroy the Samaritans in a particular village that did not want Christ and them to stay there. And he sent messengers on ahead, who went into a Samaritan village to get things ready for him; but the people there did not welcome him, because he was heading for Jerusalem.  When the disciples James and John saw this, they asked, "Lord, do you want us to call fire down from heaven to destroy them?" (Luke 9:52-54 NIV)  Here is the terrible problem with spiritual pride.  Although it may be grounded in God-thinking, it isn’t grounded in God.  James and John had plenty of faith in their ability to pray and by praying, bring down fire from heaven.  They clearly though had not much faith in God’s ability to remake and reorder lives.  It was clearly impossible in their minds for God to do anything much with the people living in the Samaritan village.  They were too far gone to be redeemed.  Jesus however thought differently and did something about it.

Let me illustrate the difference between faith in one’s faith and faith in God from a recent experience of mine.  I was working at a school as a P.E. instructor and somewhere on the school grounds lost a bracelet I was wearing.  I had been working with the kids both on a large grassy field as well as an asphalt play yard.  I searched everywhere I had been for the bracelet to no avail. As I looked to the ground, my heart looked to the heavens and I asked God to show me where the bracelet was but I still didn’t find it.  Finally, because the children were at recess, there were staff members of the school walking about supervising the kids.  I asked one of the workers if she had seen my bracelet but she told me she hadn’t.  However she encouraged me to not give up on finding the bracelet.  She had recently lost a small, diamond studded earring and searched high and low for it but the earring was nowhere to be found.  One day she spotted it in her driveway, completely undamaged.  Somehow it had gone unscathed, despite the number of times cars were parked in the driveway.  She told me not to give up on finding the bracelet.  I must admit, that I had quit thinking God would show me where the bracelet was and just smiled and thanked the woman for her encouragement.  Less than five minutes later, a girl who had been walking with the recess duty woman came to me with my bracelet.  It was not my faith that brought that bracelet back to me but rather the God of my faith that returned it in such a miraculous way.

When Jonah was sent by God to tell the people of Assyria in Nineveh that judgment was coming, he did not want to go because he thought the Lord would be easy on them.  If they asked God for forgiveness, Jonah believed God would let them off without any punishment for all the wicked things the people of that country had done.  Jonah’s faith was in his religion of right and wrong and punishments and rewards but not in God who is really God.  He did not think God could really fix all those Assyrians in Nineveh and make them a blessing to the world.  His faith in the religion of making people pay for what they do wrong was strong but His faith in the God who is really God was weak and broken.

Our Lord’s declaration to two blind men that Jesus healed is widely misunderstood.  As Jesus went on from there, two blind men followed him, calling out, "Have mercy on us, Son of David!"   When he had gone indoors, the blind men came to him, and he asked them, "Do you believe that I am able to do this?"   "Yes, Lord," they replied. Then he touched their eyes and said, "According to your faith will it be done to you"; and their sight was restored. (Matthew 9:27-30 NIV)  Jesus was not telling the men that they were healed because they had enough faith to get a healing.  They were healed because their faith was in Christ to heal them and He did it.

God does not want you to work up our faith and try to blow it up like a balloon so that you can get the things you want.  He simply tells you to trust Him in every matter.  There is so much you try to fix and so many problems you stress over because you don’t know how to solve them and the Lord tells you to settle down and trust Him with it.  Rather than fuss over something that bothers you, first go to Christ and the Holy Spirit may put a solution in your heart that will take care of your problem.  Perhaps He will begin working in someone else who will lift the problem off your shoulders.  God could simply give you peace while you wait for a solution.  God does not care one bit how great or small your faith is.  He simply wants what faith you have to be in Him.  Here is something you can say to remind you of how great God’s love is for you and how willing He is to help you.  Make this simple statement as you face the trials before you.  “Jesus is my Savior.  I put my faith in Him.”

Psychological Effect of Redemption The Will

Philippians 2:13 NIV

…for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.

What Determines Your Actions?

When I asked Mary Jo to marry me, it was an important moment for her.  She had to make a decision that clearly would dramatically impact her life.  No one else could decide for her although others could influence her decision.  Her parents may not have been happy to have me as their son-in-law but they weren’t the ones given the responsibility of saying “yes” or “no” to my proposal.  Mary Jo might have had many factors weighing on her when I “popped the question”.  She could have thought about my extremely good looks and my hilarious sense of humor and that might have influenced her.  She might also have considered how poor I was, how limited my earning power was as well as all my quirky ideas and how skinny I was and been pushed the other way.  Unconscious forces within her might have impacted her opinion of me, determining factors that she could not explain.  Perhaps early childhood experiences with taller men influenced Mary Jo’s decision.  Maybe fears or lusts or angry feelings had an effect on how she responded.  In the end though, it was her will and hers alone that acted upon my question of marriage.

You have a will, the part of your personality that decides for you what you shall do.  It is what closes the deal.  All day you make decisions.  Your passions influence how your will acts.  You have done things simply because you were angry or broken-hearted or elated.  Your conscious thinking impacts how your will responds to what you face.  You think about things, weigh the evidence and ponder what is happening and how it affects what you might do.  Your unconscious thoughts influence your will.  Sometimes childhood trauma, a destructive forgotten relationship or a humiliating experience will without your conscious knowledge determine the direction your will takes.  Because your heart is poisoned by sin, the will you possess is also damaged by Sin.  For obvious reasons, a healthy and effective will is critical to your well-being because what you decide can have lasting ramifications for you and those you love.

Let us think of the will as the part of us that creates the outward push of self.  When you reach outside yourself and act upon what is percolating within you; that is the will making the determination. Your will drives your actions.  We see this in Philippians 2: 13 in which the Bible says,”…for it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.” (Philippians 2:13 NIV)  The will is linked to whatever you do or decide you won’t do.  The Lord’s intention for you is that your will would be free to do as it wishes.  You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love. (Galatians 5:13 NIV)  However, with a free will, we can be wicked and cruel, selfish and filthy or loving and kind, truthful and generous.  It is our will that decides what we shall do.

What is amazing is that the God of the universe does not usurp your will.  Christ asked the two blind men who begged Him for help, "What do you want me to do for you?" (Matthew 20:32 NIV)  When two disciples of John the Baptist started tagging along behind Jesus, He asked them, "What do you want?" (John 1:38 NIV) The assumption underlying God’s relationship with us is that we are free to choose it or not.  “But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord." (Joshua 24:15 NIV)  The very call of Jesus to Andrew and Peter was, “Come follow me”.  (Mark 1:17 NIV) It seems that they did not have to follow Jesus if they didn’t want to do so, if they weren’t interested in being “fishers of men”. Even when the Bible calls to us, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved…", the will is left to decide how to respond.(Acts 16:31 NIV)

Consider the strange account of King David and his affair with Bathsheba.  The decision David made to sleep with her had disastrous ramifications for him.  It certainly impacted his family as well as those who saw him as a spiritual leader.  How did it affect God’s plans for David and the good He wanted David to accomplish?  The affair did not just hurt David’s reputation but God’s too.  What kind of God chooses men like David to lead His nation?  Given all the bad David’s act of Sin brought, it is interesting that God did not stop him somehow.  But David had a will that God was not willing to usurp even if it meant a disaster would be averted by doing so.  God has made us sovereign in the Will we have been given.  We are free to have Him as Lord or not, free to follow Him or not.

The will does not act in a vacuum however and in many ways it is a slave to forces beyond it.  Saul, the newly crowned king of Israel had been told by God through the prophet Samuel to wait seven days until Samuel returned before offering a sacrifice to God in preparation for the war that was about to begin.  He did wait for seven days but he did not wait long enough for Samuel to return and against God’s will, Saul and his soldiers offered a burnt offering to God.  Some of us have bought expensive presents for people we love even though they have told us not to do it and usually it works out well anyway.  In this case, it didn’t for Saul.  God punished Saul for his disobedience.

At the risk of making it seem that Saul should not have been held accountable for his rebellious act, we must consider the forces working upon Saul’s will.  First, there were his conscious thoughts.  He looked about and saw a great army of Philistines before him who were battle tested and far superior in numbers and weaponry.  As the Bible puts it, they were “as numerous as the sand on the seashore.” (1 Samuel 13: 5) Not only that, his own soldiers were going off and hiding in caves and behind bushes and in cisterns.  It seemed unreasonable to Saul as he considered the situation, not to hurry and offer the sacrifice so that he might gain God’s favor because if he waited much longer, nearly his entire army would desert him and the Philistines would attack.  Saul’s passion was pressuring his will certainly as fear began to overwhelm him.  He may have been angry too with Samuel for taking so long.  Consider Saul’s unconscious thoughts that pushed up against his will.  It was not that long ago that Saul was made king and even though Samuel had told him that he was God’s choice to be king, when it was time to present him to the nation, Saul hid among the baggage gathered off to the side.  When originally informed of God’s plans for him, Saul referred to himself as from one of the most insignificant of all the families among the Israelites.  How this impacted Saul unconsciously, we cannot say but it had to have some effect.  From birth, he saw himself as not good enough, as inadequate and incapable of accomplishing much in life.  Even when assured that God believed he could be king, Saul couldn’t buy it.  This embedded way of seeing himself made it difficult for Saul to accept the challenge of courageously trusting God.

What our Lord did for us as Savior was to take out of us the corruption of our will.  The Sin that makes the will unstable and untrustworthy is removed from it through Christ crucified.  It can function as God intended when He gave Adam the challenge of rejecting the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.  What is more, with Christ joined to us, we can have a will that agrees with God on everything.  Philippians 2: 13 reminds us that now, with Christ as part of us, it is God who works in you to will and to act in conjunction with what He wants.  In other words, God gives your will backbone to withstand the sort of pressures Saul faced. 

There is one powerful force that works on the will that must now be given its due consideration.  Our body, our physical desires can and have made the will a slave.  There is a supernatural component to the will that alters altogether the way we can live.  Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.  And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:9-11 NIV)  There is a tremendous promise here that we must take into account when we consider all those acts that it seems our bodies force us to perform.  It is seen, and we cannot say this strongly enough, that with Christ taking out of us our Sin and the Holy Spirit a part of us, the body cannot force our will into anything.  The will is altogether free in Christ to withstand even the most powerful urges of the body.  We must face this statement head on.  Either God is for us and we are able to fight off any addiction or behavior pattern that our will rejects or the Scripture is a mythology littered with colossal empty promises.

How can you ever know if your will, joined with Christ is strong enough to make free decisions that honor Christ and make your life good?  Jesus offers you an experiment to try.  Find out just how powerful Christ is and how effective His work is in you.  He says without pushing you, "Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.  But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”  (Matthew 7:13-14 NIV)  Impose your will upon every single desire that goes against what God is saying to do.  The will is like a great muscle. You must train it to follow God or it will be a slave to your passions, your body, your conscious or unconscious thoughts.  If you take your will in through the narrow gate you might find the way hard and uncomfortable and even some times unreasonable and maybe boring.  But as you train your will to follow Christ, something will happen to you that may surprise you.  God’s peace and contentment will begin to take over your heart and a joy that is supernatural will creep into you also.  The term the Bible uses for this experience is “life” and it is promised to those who bend their will to that of God.  Eventually as you train your will to follow Christ, God’s will becomes your will and you will be “the will of God”.