Another Portrait of a Loving God

Previously I mentioned an article that I read online concerning Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas and their “hate group” tactics. As it turns out Westboro has no affiliations with any Baptist denomination and is under the direction of a man named Fred Phelps. This group’s behavior seems almost like a cult and this might account for their “God is anti” propaganda. It sounds as though Phelps has put himself in the place of God and has taught his followers his views which are not biblical. It’s just heart breaking to see those people being beguiled into thinking his words and teachings could come from a loving Holy God! 

All through the bible there are many examples of the loving nature of our God, a God of grace and forgiveness, a patient God willing to give everyone the benefit of the doubt. He is a God who does not want any of His creations to parish, but gives them many chances to return to Him. 2 Peter 3:9 says this of God “the Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is long suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” Since God is also Our Father in Heaven, like any good and loving parent, He has to discipline His children when they need it, for every action there is a consequence!

Here are a couple of well known examples of God’s love and grace toward his creations; we read that in Genesis 18:20-33, God had sent two angels to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because their sin was so wicked and vile; homosexuality was one of their most wide spread sins. When God told Abraham of His plan to do this, Abraham begins the bargaining by asking this question “Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it?” God assures him that He will not destroy it if fifty righteous people can be found. Slowly God begins to come down in His figures, dropping it down to forty five, then forty, to thirty, twenty, and finally to only ten. Finally He tells Abraham that if only ten righteous people could be found He would spare them all!

Sadly when the two angels reach Sodom where Abraham’s nephew, Lot and his family are living, things get really out of hand! Lot invites the visitors to come stay the night with him and during the night all the men of Sodom, young and old, come pounding on Lot’s door demanding to have sex with his visitors. The angels put a hold on everything by blinding the men and the next day Lot, his wife, and two daughters high tail it out of Sodom! The angels give them one last word of advice, “don’t turn back and look!”, but Lot’s wife couldn’t resist the temptation and ends up as a pillar of salt! So in the end Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because God is a Holy God and must discipline His creations!

Let’s move on to another well known example of a loving God. There was this fellow by the name of Jonah who was asked by God to deliver a simple message to the wicked people of Nineveh “straighten up or face destruction” and Jonah wanted no part of it so he ran from God! He jumped a ship and sailed to Tarshish, but God caused the sea to rage and the sailors on the ship blamed Jonah for their trouble and threw him overboard. Next thing Jonah knows he’s in the belly of a whale and after three days the fish spits him up on the shores of Nineveh! Now the reason Jonah wanted no part of it was because he knows that God is just too kind and if he takes the message to the nasty old Ninevites, God just may spare them and he didn’t want that! 

So God tells Jonah a second time to deliver the message that He will destroy Nineveh in forty days, this time Jonah gives in and reluctantly goes and preaches to them. Then to Jonah’s horror, the king and everyone else, including the animals, puts on sackcloth, gives up their evil ways and prays, so God does not destroy them (this time!) so Jonah goes off in a huff and pouts saying to God “O Lord, was not this my saying, when I was yet in my country? Therefore I fled before unto Tarshish: for I knew that thou art a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness and repentest thee of the evil.”

These are just a couple of examples of how God is a loving, merciful and forgiving God, the Bible is full of them. They can be summed up by these verses in Romans 5:8 ”But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” along with John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Later Paul writes this to the Thessalonians in 1 Thessalonians 5:9&10 “For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with Him.”

So in the end, if we truly seek God, we will find Him and when we find Him we will know for ourselves a loving, merciful and forgiving God! 

Zombie Apocalypse or Resurrection?

Could there be a real threat of Zombie retaliation? Man has been fascinated with zombies for a long time, not only in horror movies and TV shows, but in third world countries, like Africa and Jamaica, where the belief in zombies is quite real. Practitioners of Voodoo and other mystical religions believe they can bring the dead back to life to accomplish evil deeds.

But are there really such beings as Zombies? It’s my thought that zombies do exist here among us right now. There might be at least two or three different types of zombies out there in the world already. One kind might be those people who do not believe in Christ as the Son of God or that God even exists at all and they wander around in a fog, not having any purpose or faith in anything but themselves, like walking dead. They are essentially dead to God.

Another kind could be those of us who believe that Christ died for our sins, rose again and is returning for us. We have died to self and now live in Christ. We are simply taking up space here on earth until He calls us home or He returns, we are dead to the world of sin, but alive through Christ and what He has done for us.

The Bible is full of “zombies” or those who have risen from the dead. In the Old Testament Elijah raised the widow of Zarephath’s son in 1 Kings 17:22 and in 2 Kings 4 Elisha raises a Shunammite woman’s son. Then again, a man was raised when his dead body came into contact with Elisha's bones in 2 Kings 13. These to me sound like zombies; they came back to life, got up, walked around and interacted with others, but no reports of them attacking and eating their fellow man! All though later on in the New Testament is the account of the demon possessed men and how Christ drove their demons into the pigs in Luke 8:26-39, which comes pretty close!

The New Testament gives some examples that are very well known; probably the most famous of all was when Jesus raised Lazarus after he had been buried for four days in John 11:38-44. He raised a widow’s son during a funeral in Luke 7:11-17 and Jairus daughter in Mark 5:21-43. But the ultimate rise from the dead was by Jesus Christ himself, when he was crucified, buried and then rose on the third day! Again He was alive, walking and talking with people! Now if you really want “zombies” this was the real deal, during Christ’s crucifixion many of the dead came out of the tombs, Matt. 27:52. Talk about zombies!

But wait, we aren’t done yet, there are still more examples to come! Paul raises Eutychus after he falls from a 2^nd story window in Acts 20:7-12 and Peter raises Dorcas in Acts 9:36-42. Although all of these certainly sound like zombies to me, I am of the opinion that the real Zombie Apocalypse isn’t scheduled until Christ returns. 

We read this account of our final victory in 1Corinthians 15:50-58:^“Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does corruption inherit incorruption. Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed— in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.  So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.” “O Death, where is your sting? O Hades, where is your victory? The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.”

That to me sounds like a Zombie Apocalypse if ever there was one! In 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 we get another image, “For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.” Philippians 3:20-21 tells us “But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control; will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.”

The thing that gets me the most, is all these TV shows about preparing for the Apocalypse and Zombies, basically only show people hording supplies and things or building fortresses, but they offer no real solutions. There is but one way to prepare for such events and that is to prepare our hearts to accept Jesus as Christ and as Our Savior, because He is the only one who can save us from such things. If you have not prepared yourself by accepting Christ as your Savior, then you will have no hope of surviving an Apocalypse of any kind and all the supplies and preparations will be for nothing!

Instead of storing up useless things here on earth, we should be preparing to share the love of Christ with others while we are here. So take the time now, while you still have it, to put your Spiritual house in order, get your life back on the right track and be assured of where you will go when the Zombie Apocalypse hits! There are only two places a person could end up in when it’s all over, Heaven with God and Christ or Hell with the Devil! So prepare wisely!

When I Stumble

Following hard on the heels of my Lord, I let out a cry and He reached down His hand pulling me up from the mire. As He wiped the tears from my eyes, I whined, “Lord, I want to follow you, but the path is too difficult, it’s full of puddles and potholes, thorns and rocks, far too many hardships! Isn’t there some other way, one less difficult? I’m so tired, won’t you carry me?” His face was radiant, His smile blinding and as He squeezed my hand He gently lifted me up and cradled me in His arms, softly whispering “yes, I am here always!”



Written by C.S. Bosse

Getting Back on the Right Track

After taking into account the very basic differences between men and women, the fact that men are "blue" and women are "pink", that neither is wrong, just different and conflict in a relationship is natural, then allowing for our own percentage of fault and not placing the entire blame on the other person, a formula for restoration can be found. Trying to repair the damage done to a relationship will take time and effort, but can be done. One way to start is to put the emphases on changing oneself and not on changing the other. Looking to the Lord and his word for inspiration is one of the best places to start, asking the Lord to transform your own heart and to change you from within. Taking the time to learn how to show love and respect to one another is an important part of life. Our relationships and especially our marriages should be able to withstand the test of time. Our goal should be to erase the stigma of being the "disposable" generation. We have become numb as a society and have learned to dispose of everything without a second thought, wives, husbands and even our kids!

Let's get back to the way God intended us to live, loving Him first, then our family and friends and finally our Country, forgiving as Christ forgave and doing God's will as Christ has taught. Colossians 3:12-14 gives us an easy pattern to follow:

"Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other, as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony."

Dealing with Conflict

     Most people are basically good willed, meaning that they don't constantly spend all their time trying to think of ways to irritate others, it just comes kind of naturally because we are human and from infancy we work at getting our own needs met. It's way easier to focus on our own needs and wants verses those of others. Most of us to some degree, live in our own little worlds, thinking our thoughts and entertaining  ourselves with the things we like. 

     God designed men and women differently, with different emotional make ups. Most women have a need to talk things over, either with their partner or their friends, for the most part men don't have this need. Men and women also process things differently, so many genuine acts can be miss interpreted. The woman who needs to talk things through, may miss interpret his silence as being unloving. The man who comes home from work after an exhausting day around others and just want's some peace and quiet, could miss interpret her need to talk things out as being disrespectful. Women also have a tendency to externalize things, we wear our emotions on the outside, on our faces and through our body language. Men are more internal, they tend to kept their emotions deep inside. It's much easier for a man to express himself freely to his male friends, than to his female partner. God created the man to be the head of the household and to be a "man of honor" by doing the right thing. A man on a battlefield during wartime, would risk death and go back for a fallen comrade because he is a man of honor, but can he acknowledge the need for his wife to express her feelings? That act is much harder and does not come naturally to a man.

      Since men think in blue and women tend to think in pink, there will be conflicts in every relationship, it is inevitable. The fact that men think in blue is not wrong, just different and so it is with women thinking in pink, not wrong, different. God created male and female to be different and he intends for you to have conflict in marriage, but his design was that we should learn to differ in loving and respectful ways, because God thinks in PURPLE!

      In the beginning, God created man, Adam, to care for the earth and it's creatures. Then he saw that it was not good for Adam to be alone, so he created Eve to help him, care for him and to populate the world. God made Adam (the male) to be the protector and provider for both of them. Eve (the female) as his assistant, providing love and nurturing. Even today these roles were not changed by God, but people have sought to expand and revise them. He created them to be a couple and work together. But what happens when conflict arises? How can it be resolved without the marriage or partnership being dissolved? 

     If we accept the fact that most people are basically good willed, but see things differently and assume that some conflict is inevitable, then we can begin to change the way we behave toward each other. It is human nature to pass judgment on others especially during a fight. Each side thinks it is right and the other is wrong. So if one side decides to be the mature one and submits to the other, with time and practice things can be mended. Say for instance, a husband and wife have just had an argument and both sides have said some pretty horrible things to each other. The husband (blue) shuts down his emotions and stomps away into another room and sits in front of the TV with a feeling of not receiving his due respect. Meanwhile the wife (pink) is left standing there with this overwhelming feeling of not being loved. The problem is not that we lack the ability to change the situation, but that we lack the incentive. 

     But what would be the outcome, if one, let’s say the husband, adopted an attitude of submission and sought out his wife and said something to the effect “That felt very disrespectful, did I come across as unloving?” and then said simply “I’m sorry!” and left it at that. Or if the wife were to follow her husband into the other room and instead of continuing with her previous rant, said something like “That felt very unloving, did I come across as disrespectful?” and said “I’m sorry!”

       Taking responsibility for one’s own behavior is not a natural or easy thing to do and may take some practice. But by stepping up and taking responsibility for your actions and not placing the blame on the other, the pattern can be changed. As Christians we are called to love others as Christ loved us, so everything we do, should be done as if the other person were Christ, himself. In Matthew 25:40 Christ says “And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these, my brethren, you did it to me.’” And then again in verse 45 of the same chapter, “Then he will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.’” We should behave as if Christ were standing right behind that person, whispering to us “do unto me” and “show this person mercy and forgiveness, I know they don’t deserve it, but do it for me”. 

      Jesus took the cross for our transgressions; can’t we at least take on the responsibility for our actions? Instead of focusing on the faults of others and blaming them, try to look past them and see your percentage of guilt and own up to it, make Christ your focus. What we do to others should be done out of reverence for Christ. Love for Christ should equal love for one’s wife (girlfriend, neighbor, boss, etc.) and reverence for Christ should equate to respect for the husband (boyfriend, children, etc.). There is a great reward for those who will make the effort!