Monday, December 15, 2008

What to do 'When all hell breaks loose in your life'

"If all hell has not yet broken loose in your life it soon will."
Now there's a comforting thought to start your day, ain't it? So writes one of my favorite columnists, Mike Adams. This former atheist, now a conservative Christian, has penned a thought-provoking missive for these troubled economic times when it seems the whole world has turned sour.

It should go without saying that I’m always pleased to hear when a reader turns to Christ. There’s no greater joy than hearing the good news that someone has accepted the Good News. By the same token, there is nothing more devastating than hearing of a reader turning away from Christianity. That happened to me recently when a fellow I once witnessed to said, “I still believe in God but I feel like he only intervenes in my life when he wants to (expletive) with me.”

The fellow who told me that also said he was not a “conservative Christian” like me but instead a “more liberal Christian.” He may or may not know that he’s on the verge of no longer being a Christian at all.

Perhaps the most accurate thing my reader has recently said about Christianity is that I am a conservative Christian. That conservatism is reflected in two things I believe to be absolutely certain about the life of a Christian:

1) I believe that - because we live in a world broken by sin and occupied by fundamentally flawed individuals - storms are inevitable. If all hell has not yet broken loose in your life it soon will. Chaos would not be so pervasive if people were as fundamentally good as the so-called liberal Christian deems them to be.

2) When all hell breaks loose in life, each individual is faced with the choice of moving toward the Cross or away from the Cross. Every person in every tumultuous situation chooses one or the other of these two options. A man has no one but himself to blame for the consequences of making the wrong decision – though the so-called liberal Christian probably dislikes my emphasis on free will.

When one responds to tragedy by moving towards the Cross it is impossible to believe that God only intervenes in men’s lives when he wants to (expletive) with them. The closer one moves to the Cross, the more one understands that God really is willing to intervene in the lives of men. One also understands that God does it because he loves all of his children and wants to have a real and permanent relationship with them.

Amen, brother Mike. Read the whole thing and you'll be ready when all hell breaks loose.

2 comments:

Patriot said...

Well I appreciate you Blog very much, I have to disagree with those who believe "God" intervenes in peoples lives.

You cannot have "Free Will" if God can/does intervene randomly in peoples lives...

Either we are free to make our own choices in life, or we are not...

The first time God intervenes in our "Free Will", we no longer have free will, and our future becomes "Fate".

Don't get me wrong, I believe in a creator, I just do not believe that creator meddles with this science experiment, as doing so would destroy the scientific value of the test: "Testing mans free will decisions."

Merry Christmas

netfotoj said...

Andy,

I am no theologian so I don't pretend to understand the concept, but the Bible is clear that man does have a free will, but God is sovereign over all of His creation and He does stay actively involved in the lives of His people as well as His creation. We have a free will, but before we choose, God knows what we're going to do. That does not absolve us of guilt for doing wrong, nor shortchange of heavenly reward for doing right. But the all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful God knows what we're going to do before we do it. God does not intervene in our free will and does not "make" us do anything. But the concept is somewhat similar to what my boot camp commander told us in the Navy. "I'm not gonna make you do anything. But if you don't do what I tell you to do, I will definitely make you wish you had."
Merry Christmas