Interactions with God #41
February 4, 2015
Interactions with God #41
I think this next “interaction” happened at the same Men’s Retreat as the last interaction. Dream or no, I was still struggling with the past events in Houston. Many questions, many battles in my mind to swallow the truths that God had revealed.
What Truths? Well, we often as Christians focus on the more nice things the God of the bible does. Especially when it comes to how He relates to us. This can give us a completely wrong view of God. With a wrong view of God, who then do we really worship? This is why “knowing” God is so important. Otherwise we just might find ourselves worshiping our own made up god.
THE God does some great and nice things, true. Yet, He also does some rather scary and dangerous things. Things like ripping the ground open to swallow a whole family. Drowning whole armies in water. Striking an entire nation with a plague. Killing a man and woman in the middle of a church meeting because they lied about how much they money they gave. And of course one of the more intimidating things, the purpose of Judas, the betrayer. Yes, Judas had a purpose. Jesus even says of him that he was doomed to destruction. Ouch. A man born with the purpose of being THE betrayer and doomed for it. Sad, but very true.
Does this paint a bad picture of God? Is God now unrighteous? Listen, do you really think any man or angel will be able to accuse God of unfairness or unrighteousness on judgment day? HA! Not likely. If I had the power to just move through time, with that alone I could act perfectly just by going back in time and doing it better. God, however, does not need to correct any mistakes, He does it perfectly the first time, always. No, our problem is that we try to apply our idea of right and wrong to God, who, IS the one defining right and wrong. Not very smart of us, really. Sure, He does things that seem wrong to us. But, He has reasons for it and if we ever hear them, no one, and I mean NO ONE man or angel, will be able to point a finger at Him. Never gonna happen.
With the thought of Judas and his purpose in mind, I had a rather disturbing thought during a morning prayer meeting with all the men of the church. I considered how badly the events in Houston went. I considered my “purpose”. What if, I was also called to be like Judas? Yea, stupid thought, but I really did consider it that morning. It really bothered me. Maybe I was supposed to be hurt because I was going to be used of God to show His righteousness in judgment. As I entertained this thought and my feelings turned south, one of the leaders of the church, a man by the name of Don Kinghorn spoke to me in front of everyone. “Lou, God has a message for you. He wants you to know that you are not called to destruction. You are not born to judgment. You are called with a higher purpose. You are His.” Yes, he said this right while I was THINKING I was just the opposite.
God is so cool!