Fearlessly Courageous
Desk of Dennis Piller
6 10 2024
People have often believed that in the middle of their catastrophe … their calamity or their hell, that their sins have come back to haunt them to illicit some form of cosmic or divine justice.
But that isn’t who God is.
He doesn’t repay us for our past mistakes or sins as a recompense for our disobedience or sins. Jesus died for those…. He died for us. Instead, God commands us, “Forget the former things; and do not dwell on the past.” (Isaiah 43:18), lest we miss the new thing He is doing right in front of us! When people talk about or think about their past, it seems to take on the characteristics of a real-life being, but it’s another lie, because the past cannot breathe, talk, think, or do anything. Philippians 3:13-14 says “Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do:
Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus”.
If God no longer looks at our past sins or errors who are we to take up the past?
It is true, that God is sovereign, and his mercy and his wrath fall on the just and unjust alike.
Matt 5:45 Have you ever thought how God can be merciful and just at the same time?
God is not soft on crime or the evil in this world. In his justice, God judges us all because we are guilty. Then in his mercy and love he came down in the person of his Son, Jesus Christ, and paid the penalty for us. Through the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, God is both just and merciful.
But in our ignorance, our lack of learning and studying Gods holy word, we elect to question God’s means or purposes or the ultimate eternal orchestration of plans only he knows.
How presumptuous are we?
How full of ourselves are we to think we even have an inkling of the ultimate truth? No one… Can know the future or how god will use any given set of circumstances for his ultimate glory
and our eventual good. How can we know who or what he will use to achieve his righteous plans?
In a battle, sometimes soldiers are killed due to friendly fire. (Their own men killed them). In real life too innocents can be caught in an apparent crossfire. A child is killed in an auto accident…or has cancer or some malignant tumor and some will question God’s existence because
how could a good God allow this to happen when He could stop it?
Are we to believe that God’s sovereignty has an innocent lost in what could be loosely described as friendly fire? It should not have happened! In our view…there can be no earthly purpose or redeemable measure to justify this end!
Jesus knows that we want someone or something to blame for tragedy; Some think the catastrophe must be punishment for a particularly bad sin. This type of thinking would say, that Hurricane Katrina hitting New Orleans was punishment for all of its wickedness.” Now, New Orleans is certainly a city full of wickedness, but this is the type of thinking that Jesus rejects.
While Jesus doesn’t give us the reason for the tragedy, He does, however, say what we are to do when we hear of tragedy, “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” [Luke 13:3,5] Whenever we see or hear of a catastrophe we are to repent, knowing that we deserve the same, or worse, and that it is only by God’s grace that we are spared and given another day. Why do we view this thinking as so foreign. God’s purpose is always repentance… that we are sorry for our sins and at the same time trust the promise that our sins are forgiven through Jesus’s death on the cross.
But the flesh reacts just the opposite when tragedy strikes.
It rises up in pride and anger against God and cries, “How could You let this happen?”
The sinful flesh thinks that it deserves a life of peace with no suffering, but faith knows better.
We deserve nothing that the Lord gives.
May God grant that tragedies, big and small, always lead us to repentance and not a hardened heart, but rather one of understanding, humility and not pride.
Why?..so that we might understand and receive His presence…
His next visitation with humility, meekness and faith.
Knowing His love is so great…
His sacrifice so unfathomable to ever doubt his goodness and His perfect plan.
And the greatest of these gifts is love.
Excerpts are taken from Pastor Bryan Wolfmueller
Tell you heart beat again. Danny Gokey
