Hope is the Reason for the Season

The reason for the season? I thought it was Easter, not Christmas. Well before you get too concerned it is Easter, and Easter is a time of hope. When a tragedy strikes such as what we have seen in Japan, or when a personal tragedy such as the death of a family member, loss of a job or serious health issue strikes us directly, we start to ask a lot of questions about God and what he is doing to us.


Some of the questions that people tend to ask in times like this are:

• Is God punishing me or my family for something we did?
• Why would God allow thousands of innocent people die in a natural disaster?
• Why would such a loving God allow people to suffer like those in Japan or that family member that died from a long, painful battle with cancer and yet, let people who do not care about anything or anyone live so long?

These are some of the types of questions that people ask in hard times and they can be very difficult to answer. You may be asking some of these kinds of questions yourself, and in the process you may be questioning your own faith in God over the things you see going on in the world today or over some personal tragedy in your life. If that is the case I want to try and provide some answers for you. I also want to provide you with some hope and try to help you understand that things are not as they always seem.

The true believer
The true believer who wants to serve God and put Him first is always asking God to use them to reach out to other people and to draw them closer to God. In many cases this means putting others first and doing the right thing no matter what the personal cost is (money, public ridicule, loss of job, loss of friends). Even though this is what the true believer may have asked for, they may not understand why something bad happened when all they wanted to do was serve God and help others.

Is God punishing me or my family for something we did?
Why would such a loving God allow people to suffer?
It is very hard to understand why bad things happen, and when it happens to our family or someone close to us we tend to get angry at God because it leaves such marks on our lives. To better understand these things you have to go right back to Genesis chapter 1. At the end of the six days of creation God said that everything was very good, and he had given the fruit of the trees for people and every green herb of the field for the animals for food (Genesis 1:29-31). This meant that there was no death, no suffering, no disease, no pain, no animals killing each other for food and our bodies did not wear out because of God’s sustaining power. This is the way God intended for everything to be, but Adam and Eve decided to break the one rule that God gave them. As a result He removed some of his sustaining power and things have gone downhill since then (i.e. second law of thermodynamics). The day will come, however, when everything is restored back to the way it was (maybe even better).

When Jesus was asked “Who sinned? This man or his parents to cause him to be born blind?” Jesus answered them simply that his blindness was not because of anyone’s sin but so that God would be glorified by it. We have to remember that life is not about us. It is about God and his glorification. He has graciously allowed us to be a part of it. In times of tragedy we can touch more people than we may ever touch if we live an uneventful life for another 40 or 50 years. In today’s world with social networking and electronic media your family’s story can be told around the entire world in a matter of hours and not just to your friends and neighbors. Have there been any situations like this that has brought you closer to your own children, family and even God? Remember what the true believer, trying to serve God asked for? Now the question is what will you do when these things enter your own life? Get angry at God or draw closer to Him and “lean not unto your own understanding” but trust that He knows what He is doing?

Everyone prayed so hard for our situation but it still turned out badly, why?
This is a question that many people struggle with, but the thing that most people do not seem to understand is that those who were praying so hard for healing or relief in some way may have gotten exactly what they prayed for. Just not in the way they wanted it, but God did answer that prayer. Human nature is to want someone healed immediately so that we can have them back in our lives, and we no longer have to live under the stress of what that person is going through. The hardest thing that anyone will go though is to watch their loved one suffer for a long time and then die after everyone prayed for them. For the true believer, while painful, we have hope that we will see those loved ones again. For that believer who died, they are in better health, more at peace and happier than they have ever been in this life. That is what the prayers were for - healing, peace, etc.

So, where is the hope you talked about?
In regard to those who have died, the hope comes from the Bible. In I-Thessalonians Chapter 4 starting in verse 13 we read:

But we do not want you to be uninformed, brethren, about those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve as do the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words. NASB

When Paul talks of those who have “fallen asleep in Jesus,” he is referring to the true believers that have already died. He goes on to say that we should not grieve like those who have no hope. All of us have seen the stories on TV where someone lost a child or other family member, and they are in so much pain that they cannot function. You will sometimes hear those people being interviewed, and they talk about never seeing their loved one again and are very saddened by that. These are the people who simply have no hope, and in some cases when there is no hope, there is no reason to live. Please do not misunderstand what I am saying. Because we have hope in Christ that does not mean that we do not grieve, but we do not have to grieve as long or as hard as those with no hope. This is what I held on to when my mother passed away from cancer a few years ago.

Even when less tragic events happen in our lives we can still have this kind of hope. For example, losing a job is hard, but when we have our hope and trust in the risen Christ, we do not have to worry so much because he cares for us. In my experience when I have lost jobs there was always something better around the corner. No, the better things did not happen overnight, but they did come. If we have our hope in Christ then we do not have to worry about these kinds of things. Romans 8:28 says that God works everything “to our good” not that everything “will be good”. We may never see or know what worked to our good because God may have been keeping us from something far worse in the future.

Do you have the hope in you?
One thing we can say for sure is that if we are true believers and know that we are part of God’s forever family we will see those people again if they too were true believers. I like to think of it as having to move across the country with no access to phone or mail to talk to those we love. While I would rather be with them or at least be able to talk to them I know that this is a temporary thing, and that if I am still alive when Christ returns then he will bring those people with him to usher me into God’s presence. If I die before that day then I will come to meet those I left behind and will help usher them into God’s presence. Either way, what a wonder day that will be!!

Do you have this hope in you? Can you say for certain that when you die you will be reunited with those who have gone on before? If you can say yes then do you have other family members that you are not so sure about? If so, pray for them. Live the example before them. As we have seen with things like in Japan, life can end quickly and unexpectedly. Life is short, and time may be running out for yourself or those you love.

Why You May Have Already Lost Your Children

In my previous post, I provided some rather shocking statistics on when our children are “checking out” vs. when most parents think this is happening.  In that post I had also challenged you to talk to your children and ask them if they think everything in the Bible is true and to ask them about specific events in the Bible.  Were you surprised by the answers they gave you?  Were you able to tell them the truth?

In this post I want to try and put a little reasoning as to why we are seeing the mass exodus from the faith by our young people.  

Like most things in life we are not losing our children overnight.  It is a gradual process that starts as early as kindergarten (i.e. cubbies) and continues as our children grow (AWANA, Trek, Jr. and Sr. High).  The problem starts with the way we are telling our children “Bible Stories” and not telling them that the Bible contains actual historical accounts of real and verifiable events.  When these children grow older and go off to school, they are repeatedly told about the “facts of evolution” and that the Bible is great for literary reading because of its “stories/fables” and allegories for spiritual growth.  There are two examples that come to mind where we are inadvertently actually building a foundation that will help move them away from God and the Bible as they grow older.

Noah’s Ark

When you ask the younger children to draw a picture of Noah’s Ark and the animals you will see something like figure 1 when the truth lies more along the lines of figures 2 and 3 below.

 

FIGURE 1

FIGURE 2

FIGURE 3

While Figure 1 is cute and appeals to children, it is setting them up to more easily walk away from the “stories” they learned earlier on.  As the children grow older, if they have not been told the actual facts as seen in figure 2 and figure 3 (pay close attention to the animals in Figure 2) they will remember the stories and pictures they saw first and will discard the truth because they most likely have not seen or heard the actual truth.

Creation and Dinosaurs

One of the biggest things that will cause children and youth to walk away from the Bible is not telling them the truth of creation and how dinosaurs were part of the original creation who also walked the earth with man.  I do not think you will find many pictures of Noah’s Ark that shows dinosaurs on the ark, but they were there.  Children are taught in school from the very beginning that dinosaurs lived millions of years ago and all died millions of years before man “evolved”.  Almost any children’s book about dinosaurs will start out with something like “Millions of years ago…”.  The Bible is quite clear that all things were created in a literal six days.  If you interpret scripture with scripture you will see that all other places in the Bible that talk about a literal 24 hour day uses the same words and basic phrases of those in Genesis 1.   Why would we accept it 400 times to mean six days and replace the meaning in Genesis with millions of years?  Do we believe that the entire Bible is true or just parts of it?  If only parts, which parts?  Is Ephesians 2:8-9 or Romans 10:9-10 true?  How do you know?

Can you answer their questions?

Remember this from my last posting?

Would you say that questioning was the beginning of your doubting the Bible?

Yes 55.61 %

No 31.12 %

Don’t know 13.27 %

55% say that they had questions and could not get them answered in a truthful and logical way.  Most people would answer the hard questions like this:

The Old Testament and the creation “story” are not important.  Just trust in Jesus.  He loves you and has a plan for you.  Do not worry about the other stuff.

There is some truth in this line of thinking because our salvation does not depend on whether we believe in six days or millions of years.  However, the Bible text is very clear and can be validated by any true Hebrew scholar.  Yet we still tell our kids that science is correct and the Bible is wrong (sometimes more by what we do not do and say.)  In so doing, we undermine the authority of the entire Bible and set our kids up to walk away because they do not know what to believe anymore.

What kinds of questions are the kids today asking?

You might be surprised to find out the kinds of questions being asked.  I recently had a conversation with some of the youth at our church and the first question from one of them was, “Why does the Bible say it is OK to stone your kids when they misbehave?”  As the discussions went on, another question was along the lines of, “Why do we not do the things that the Old Testament tells us to do and only do what the New Testament says to do – are they not both from the same Bible and God”?

Can you provide an adequate answer to these questions? (If you have paid attention to the sermons lately you can answer one of them.)  I have actually heard these same kinds of questions from other youth at various times.  If they are asking hard questions like this, they must really be searching deeper than “just trust in Jesus and everything will be OK” truth.   Here are some other things you will hear asked by youth and adults alike:

·       If God is loving and caring why does he allow so much pain and suffering?

·       Why does God let the bad people live a long time and take the young believers who are in the prime of their life and living for God?

·       How can a God so big care anything about me?  I am so insignificant he could not love me.

These kinds of questions are some of the biggest reasons why people walk away. (Charles Darwin and Ted Turner are good examples.)

I would encourage you to put your answers to these questions in the comments section of the blog and discuss them with other readers and your families.  You may be surprised at what you learn from the experience.