Interesting sermon this Sunday by Dr Erwin Lutzer of Moody Bible in Chicago. His sermon was "Children of an Awesome God!"
Pastor Lutzer told the congregation that it is tough to be optimistic when trudging through life’s tough times.
Some people try to grin and bear it; others crack under the pressure.
But the Christian can have a perspective that makes enduring troubles
possible, a perspective of a future glory that makes our present
suffering infinitesimal in comparison. Many of us think of tough times as usually being about financial situations; and why not when money and greed is the greater plague today. Besides that, we also face illness which creates tough times. We are told by Paul (in his life situation, he was blind and then could see) and can read for ourselves the healing that Jesus did during his time on earth. Healing is ours as we are alive in Christ Jesus. Yet, many people want healing when they want it = NOW and if they are not healed immediately, they think that God does not exist or does not love them and many think that suffering would not exist if God truly existed. Suffering exists not because God wants us to suffer but He allows us to suffer to remind us that this world is not our true eternal home. God allows healing for the same reason... to encourage us so that we do not lose faith. The promise of healing is ours. In this fallen world, God decides in order to glorify Himself. Does that mean God is judgmental of believers? It means that our faith in Him gives substance to hope and future glory. This is still a fallen world we occupy and must remember that it will be made new in God's time. The hope and promise that is ours is salvation through Jesus Christ! This alone is the ultimate healing as we 'believers' are children of an Awesome God! Healing in this world is not impossible but keep in mind that when healing happens for us it is Glorify God ... to show us and remind us we will be delivered from this fallen world as we have already been made new in Christ Jesus and we anticipate His Kingdom Come - our eternal home, our future glory!.
Some people get caught by the idea that man is the beginning and end of man. They arrive at this through the view of man's evolutionary chronology; looking at events/discoveries/literature as a means to recognize man's assent. The Bible even as a piece of 'literature' can be used in this chronology. They are oblivious to their own logic. If one gives credence to other forms of literature as a means to gauge man's assent, then the Bible is one of the most amazing pieces of literature in this kind of measure. For me, avoiding the Old Testament and New testament is illogical. The Old Testament is not only an incredible view into man's mind, but also a mathematical instruction for the understanding the cosmos. The concept "new historicism' is what some people think of as something new in view of man's contemplation of the himself and the cosmos connecting to culture as it is experienced in a place. As a sociologist, people fail to recognize that man's real cognitive development was aroused by contemplation of a creator. This cognitive phenomenon occurs in all human groups and from that all imagination about who we are and what it is all about have allowed man to grow out from other animals. As a Christian, Jesus Christ is a alive, no other animal other than man can imagine such a thing.
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