What happens when bad things happen to Christian people? Did they not pray enough? Plead the blood of Jesus protection over them enough? Bind the work of Satan in Jesus' name enough? I was in conversation with a lady a church this Sunday we were discussing a recent tragic home invasion. The family was Christian. "The Christian walk of faith is not a rabbits foot that we can rub for good luck" I told her, "are we immune to tragedy in the world because we know Christ? Jesus promises that in this world (John 16: 33) we will have tribulations, but He has overcome the world". The lady was not happy with what I had to say. She seemed to feel her family had some sort of invisibility cloak sheilding them from the hand of darkness because she prayed. I thought to myself, bring out the garlic.
God is sovereign but when he commanded Adam not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam did anyway. Adam had a choice to obey or disobey the sovereign will of God. "Let there be light", "Let there be water" said God, and all the other elements of creation and it happened because it proceeded from His mouth. But sovereignty seems to hit pause until human choice is made because we were given free will. I wish I could take credit for this thought but I will credit Religiously Transmitted Diseases, Finding a Cure When Faith Doesn't Feel Right by Ed Gungor. Ed Gungor would diagnose the dilemma that lady in church had as Sovereignty Shingles.
His web address:http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=68591626
In my life there has been constant sorrow from one thing or another. I have had to deal with the issue of God's sovereignity and man's bad choices over and over again coming to the conclusion that the God I know is BIG enough to work His will anyway. My understanding has shifting from God working his will from a linear straightline perspective to a perspective of overflowing trickels, rivulets, like a bunch of rocks, the water first moves around and splashes over and eventually tumbles them out of the way or into each other so that they become grains of sand.
In this world we will have trouble, sorrow, sickness, disease, violence, decay. Christ kingdom is not of this world. We live in this world and yet our citizenship is in His kingdom.
"THE DISCIPLES bear the suffering laid on them only by the power of him who bears all suffering on the Cross. As bearers of suffering, they stand in communion with the crucified. They stand as strangers in the power of him who was so alien to the world that it crucified him. This is their comfort, or rather, he is their comfort, their comforter. … This alien community is comforted by the Cross."
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship
" Do you know believe? Behold the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered each to his own home, and will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me. I have said these things to you, that you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation, but take heart: I have overcome the world." Jesus
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