Negotiate with God

 

Genesis 18:16-33 tells us about Abraham negotiating with God about the fate of Sodom.  God has seen the wickedness in Sodom and has told Abraham he is going to destroy the city.  Perhaps fearing for his nephew Lot and his family who lived in Sodom, Abraham began a negotiation reminding God that it may not be right to destroy all the city when righteous people are living there.  God agreed to spare the city if fifty righteous people could be found.  Perhaps Abraham knew the character of the city that he knew there might not be fifty righteous people living there.  So he began to negotiate with God; if forty-five can be found will the city be spared?  God agreed with that number.  However, Abraham continued to negotiate downward in increments of five until he finally reached the number ten.  If ten righteous people can be found in the city can it be spared?  God agreed with ten.  Of course we know by reading the full account that even that number could not be found; ultimately God passed judgment over the city and destroyed the city.

 

 

 

I wonder if sometimes we don't have the same heart as Abraham as we live in a world that we are seeing devolve with corruption, greed, sin and wickedness as each day passes.  God has clearly stated His requirements for living and has laid them out in the Bible for all to know.  I believe if we listen closely we will find that people are negotiating with God trying to convince Him to change His mind about what He has commanded and clearly made known. 

 

The problem is that we really are no different in character and personality than those people in Sodom so many years ago.  Even in our negotiations we falter and stumble inevitably further into sin even if God has provided the Grace to accept our negotiated terms.  We can never be satisfied with what we have since when we move outside of God's Grace we revert to our sin nature and never find satisfaction; we always want more than what we have. 

 

Through the process of negotiation we forget that God, the Creator of the Universe, sets all the boundaries, establishes His commands and communicates to us what He requires.  His Grace is sufficient for each of us, but we believe we need more, and ultimately desire more.  We bargain with God to bend a little, "I know God you have stated you want us to love our enemies and do good to those who persecute us, but you know how sweet vengeance is.  Could we just strike back a little, just to teach our enemy a lesson?"  "We know God you are not a respecter of persons and you look on the heart rather than the outside of a person, but surly you can understand that there are different ethnic groups and class distinctions that have to be recognized in our cultures and since we are living here we should parcel out the stations in life for different people groups, shouldn't we?"

 

God is not slack, as some men count slackness, but He will render judgment in spite of our futile efforts to negotiate His changing His mind.  Perhaps the best thing for us to do is submit to His Grace and allow Him to provide for us His power through His Spirit to strengthen us to live within the provisions He has already made for us, and refrain our futile attempts to negotiate a change of mind for Him.

 

Jim Killebrew



God and the atheist

 



I think it may have been St. Augustine who said in essence, as an unbeliever you do not believe God exists; as a believer I believe He does exist and everything He says is Truth. What if when you die I am right and you are wrong? It will make a tremendous difference to you in the way you lived your life. You will face judgment and sentencing from the God of the Universe. If when I die and you are right, it won't really make any difference to me, I will be dead. How willing are you to take that chance?

Going a step further, when a person believes in God, how is it not possible to also believe He has tirelessly communicated with us to reveal His plan of salvation?  If a person believes in God and even believes on a cursory level the writings in the Bible, how would it be possible not to believe that God worked through His Son Jesus to reconcile the world to Himself through the sacrifice of shedding His blood on the cross to provide the means for salvation to all who believe? 

To stand firm in disbelief in the face of all evidence God has offered is a stubbornness rooted in ignorance,  grown into foolishness and finished in futility.

Jim Killebrew  

God's reminder

 

I have always found it amazing that anywhere you open to in the Bible and start reading I can always see Jesus in any of those passages because we are this side of the cross.

Just now to test this hypothesis I picked up a Bible at my desk and randomly opened it to 1 Chronicles 4:27: "Shimei had sixteen sons and six daughters, but his brothers did not have many children; so their entire clan did not become as numerous as the people of Judah."

Then I thought, Judah was the clan from which Jesus was born years later.

I then tried again and this time randomly landed on Proverbs 22:17-18: "Pay attention and listen to the sayings of the wise; apply your heart to what I teach, for it is pleasing when you keep them in your heart and have all of them ready for your lips."

Then I thought that Jesus is the wisest Teacher of all, and He promised to put His "Law" in my heart.

My friend sent me a story form Joni Eareckson that reminds me of the example like the one I just mentioned about the Bible. As a Christian I believe God has given us the ability to look at any experience we have and see the presence of Jesus in it. All we have to do is yield ourselves to His Will and He allows us to see that everything we experience is somehow related to Him and His provision for us.

"The Wall Won't Hurt You"

Joni Eareckson

"For by You I can run against a troop, by my God I can leap over a wall. Psalm 18:29, NKJV"

"Corie is 19 years old, a little under five feet tall, has one of the most winsome smiles I've ever encountered, and has Down Syndrome. Corie's speech is a little slurred and her nouns and verbs don't always match. But that just adds to her charm. One summer at a Family Retreat she asked me excitedly, "Are you going rock wall and come down and watching me climb it all the way to the top and back down okay?" I replied, 'You bet!'"

"I watched the conference staff workers strap my new friend into her helmet and climbing harness. Corie was ready! She gave me a happy 'thumbs up,' turned to the wall, grabbed a rock, and away she went. She was so fast! This girl had no fear! After she had conquered her goal and scooted back down the wall, everyone cheered."

"But Heather, who was next, was too nervous to cheer. It was her very first climb... and she has Down syndrome, too. "Are you ready?" the staff worker asked her. She could only stare at him with a blank expression. But then Corie stepped in. "Headder, you are going, too, up?" she said. Slipping an arm around her friend, Corie said softly, "Okay it is, Headder. The wall won't hurt you." That was all Heather needed to hear. In the next instant she was scrambling up the wall. Halfway up, she meekly called down, 'It doesn't hurt!'"

"Are you facing an intimidating wall right now... a medical problem, an unexpected bill, a strained relationship, or a wrestling match with temptation? God has a purpose, and knows all about what you're facing. Look up, take heart and say, "I can do everything through him who gives me strength" (Philippians 4:13)."

Ms. Eareckson's  thoughts help us to understand that sometimes we face "walls" of discouragement and pain.  Our experiences may seem far away from what God is doing in our lives.  However, during good times, or not so good times, every experience for the Christian is a reminder that God has shed His Grace on each of us.  We can see Him and His working in and through us as we yield ourselves to Him and allow His Spirit to work through us. 

Sometimes it may seem that he is far away and there seems to be no purpose in what we are going through, but with His Grace, the shadows are dispelled, the curtain is drawn and we see clearly how an event has given us strength to grow in Him.  It is like the famous poem, "Footprints" when there was only one set of footprints in the sand and Jesus says, "It was then when I carried you."

   

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One in Christ

When we look at the seventeenth chapter of John in the New Testament we see a prayer that Jesus prayed.  The prayer is so intimate as He involves Himself with His Father in Heaven and asks that He might be glorified and allowed to give eternal life to all who are in Him.  Jesus prays for His Disciples as well; but not only them, for each of us who have committed ourselves to Him as well.

Picking up with verse twenty in chapter seventeen, Jesus says, "I am not praying only on their [His Disciples] behalf, but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their testimony, 17:21 that they will all be one, just as you, Father, are in me and I am in you. I pray that they will be in us, so that the world will believe that you sent me. 17:22 The glory you gave to me I have given to them, that they may be one just as we are one – 17:23 I in them and you in me – that they may be completely one, so that the world will know that you sent me, and you have loved them just as you have loved me."  (John 17:20-23)

Imagine, Jesus was actually praying for us.  He looked from His vantage point from the Alpha to the Omega, the Beginning to the End, and saw us who needed redemption, atonement and justification.  Through the testimony for the first Disciples and their position of being in Jesus Who was in His Father, we believe, and because of it have been given the glory the Father gave the Son, so we can be one with the Father and the Son.

With the shed blood of Jesus wrapped around us who believe, it hides our nakedness in much the same way as the animal skins hid the nakedness of Adam and Eve.  Our sin is hidden from God because He chooses to offer His Grace and forgiveness because of what the Son has done once, for all, on the cross.  Finally, through His work we are loved by the Father just as He loved the Son.

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Beginning of wisdom

Solomon wrote in his Proverbs,




"The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction. (Proverbs 1:7) (KJV)


God is the one to be feared, but not necessarily in a sense of pulling back away from, but more a reverent approach of awe and respect with an aim toward worship. In the Christian life one senses the majesty and awesomeness of a Creator God and that Christian places everything else in a secondary position. From within that fear is the foundation of hearing from God what His will is for the Christian life. Christian living, then, is undergirded with God as the foundation and the starting point for gaining wisdom.


As Christian living begins to surround the individual through God's Spirit, the Christian begins to want to turn away from evil and avoid those things that are known to be displeasing to God. Yielding to God's message, the Christian steps onto the path of being led into righteousness through the power of God. This is not a work the Christian performs in order to gain some special favor with God, but rather a continual yielding to God's power in His Spirit that moves the Christian from a mere "head" knowledge to a "moral" knowledge.


Moral knowledge is an experiential knowledge that is produced in the Christian from the leading of God's Spirit. It enables the Christian to meld into practical Christian living experiences that reflect the Spirit of God. Again, this is not a "work" in which the Christian engages, of which he could boast, but a gift from God bound in the work of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross through the shedding of His blood, and the subsequent work of the Holy Spirit that dwells within the heart of the Christian. It is a gift of God by taking the Christian's hand and walking with him as he embarks on the journey of obtaining Wisdom.


Solomon wrote in such a way as to contrast two thoughts; the antithetical parallelism in verse 7 contrasts the one who is beginning the journey on the path to obtain Wisdom to the one who lives life in a completely opposite way. Solomon referred to that person as a fool.


That is a person who claims that Christian living is a weakness, a crutch needed by the Christian in order to make it in life. The fool's wisdom is to depend entirely on "self" to be the god of his life. What he desires is the important thing in life, and he defines what is most important; nothing can compare to his acquiring the best for himself. This is seen in the American culture as the constant quest for "things" and happiness. The seeking of self-pleasure consumes the individual constantly seeking newer, bigger, better, most advanced things that ends with a comparison of his life being, "He who has the most wins." A competitive tendency grows to the natural order of getting ahead no matter who gets in the way of personal success.


This lifestyle fails to view moral knowledge as important and engages in thoughts and activities that negate wisdom in the moral sense. As the verse states, it is wisdom and instruction that fools despise.


For the Christian to receive instruction in the Word of God and set his foot on the pathway to moral knowledge, and then turn from that instruction is to join the ranks of the fools. Christian living is to acknowledge God's Word, listen to the instruction of God's Word and yield to the Spirit of God to continue in His presence and have God write the instructions of Christian living on the Christian's heart.


Solomon began his writings by saying the Proverbs had a purpose. That purpose was to,


"Know wisdom and instruction; to perceive the words of understanding." (Proverbs 1:2) (KJV)


Discernment is to learn by instruction the ability to know the moral truth and acquire the skill to distinguish between the truth and something else that is not the truth. It is the acquisition of a skill that is given to the Christian the ability to understand Wisdom. As the Christian becomes immersed in the Word of God through the gift of the Holy Spirit, through his personal faith in Christ, the power of the Spirit energizes the Christian to continue seeking the righteousness of God. The Christian lives and works then to do righteous acts, not to be saved, but because he is saved. Christian living is a gift from God, with all glory going to Him.