"Is God real?"
"Can we really know?"
"If he is real and is at work in the world, why is there such suffering and anguish in the world?"
"Surely God, who is all powerful, can put a stop to this?"
These are the real questions that those who doubt God ask of Christians all the time. They are hard questions – one that requires more than a glib answer that doesn’t directly address the question directly, or a circular answer that uses the Bible as the primary source for a discussion, when the people who have asked the question doubt the Bibles authenticity. It is hard for Christians to avoid referencing the Bible, as Christians use the Bible as the primary source for referencing God’s story and his plan for us, his wisdom, his poetry, his philosophy, his law, and the culture of God’s people in history.
In fact,
Christians believe we are part of God’s continuing narrative in the world, with
his church being an extension to the words contained in the Bible. The Bible is
where those seeking God can find him. The church unfortunately, has not been
the best lens in which to see God at times, but people are what they are, mistakes
are always made when people are around, hence our need of God.
We can look to
answers for our existence through science, believing in the probability that
the world as we know it came from nothing, or we could adopt a Christian
perspective, where we also use science to help us understand the universe in
order to better understand God’s sovereignty and his relationship he has with
his people us on the earth. For many Christians, science can explain the
mechanism by which life functions, but it cannot explain the purpose of life as
we know it.
Scientists, in
order to make sense of the logic of their arguments, often refer to philosophy
in order to explain the conclusion to the models that they construct. This pseudo
philosophy helps to explain the uncertainty of the modelling they have employed
to explain life, in order to help us understand how humans came into existence without
any reference to God. Similarly, Christians also use philosophical arguments to
discuss the nature of humanity and the metaphysical aspects to the universe in
defence of God. Science does not in and of itself, lead to atheism. Atheism is
the outright rejection of a deity or deities.
It is important too, to recognise that theism, having a belief in God, is not a God of the gaps faith. God is bigger than simply being the mechanism for life. God is the causation or agent for perpetuating life. Scientists cannot create life from nothing, even though they may declare the ‘Higgs Boson’ identified in 2012, as the ‘God Particle.’
The Higgs is a particle that is seen to bond protons and neutrons together to create matter, hence the God Particle reference, through the energy of the particles colliding as theorised in the standard model of particle physics. The boson is the energy or force that glues the particles together, seemingly out of the nothing, but acting like a rubber band, holding the particles together, giving it mass, and thereby creating matter that bonds itself together to become life as we know it?
Just because the Higgs
Boson can do this, doesn’t mean that we have the building blocks for life. We do
have a more complete picture of how matter is formed within the standard
theoretical model because we have found nearly all of the parts… but this isn’t
life. It is only the mechanism by which created life seems to exist. In the
Bible story of creation, the spirit of God hovered over the waters and God
said, ‘Let there be light.’ At that moment, all of the creative energy of God,
with the Higgs Boson included if you will, set about to create the universe.
God is the source – he is the agent from which all life came. He is not a God
of the gaps… he is the creator. It is science that helps us to fill in the
gaps, not the other way round, as some would have you believe.
Science would
argue that as we unravel the physics of the universe, our understanding of
origin would become incidental, in that we have sentience. We are self-aware,
so we can reason; we can make positive decisions to affect our environment for
our own survival. Our primitive lack of understanding of how things came to be,
created superstition about the world we didn’t understand allowing concepts of great
deities to make sense of the unknown. The humanist perspective would simply say
that civilisation was misguided at best, superstitious at the worst.
The elaborate
imaginations of those involved in the worship of the earth, helped to evolve
our superstition into religious idealism and notions of morality, laws and
order. Our more enlightened age is helping us to remove the barriers to our
social evolution, put upon us by the misguided, ill-informed minds of the past,
so that humanity is at last free to embrace life without the ghastly spectre of
religion.
So the question still remains – “How can a just, all powerful and all-knowing God allow the injustice and suffering in the world to go on… not only in the one-off event that befalls many people, but in the continuing degradation of human misery of whole people groups. Surely his silence proves he doesn’t exist?”
The Christian
believer battles with this question just as much as those who profess to have no
faith. This question, and others like it, are the trigger’s which cause some to
fall from faith. When ones sense of hopelessness, overwhelms our ability to
reconcile the nature of God to the situation we face, it is not easy to accept
that God is indeed working in all circumstance.
I do not have the
answers as to why one person is healed of an injury or an illness, and the
other is not. It may lead us to conclude, ‘How
can there be justice here?’ Is there however, more to God than simply a
lucky supernatural force that saves us from ourselves? I would hope so, or else
I would have to agree with the scientists taunt that God is merely
superstition.
So from science we can find answers. Our human DNA is made up of an ancestral lineage going back millennia. Each new life born to that chromosomal pair, mix the genome, creating anomalies. We do not have pure breeding is what I am saying. And so our bodies can only be as healthy as the genetic material it is birthed with.
As babies, infants, children and adults, we are exposed to environmental and diet related toxins that affect our body chemistry, causing abnormal genes. These are also passed along the family line. When we look at our children, we can see the family resemblance and know we belong. Yet with all this knowledge about biology and chemistry, we tend to forget it in the heat of our emotions, when someone we love has been struck down with bad health. We blame God.
Why do some
suffer heart disease, rare illness or calamities such as freak accidents and
death? Well it’s because we live out our lives in the now, with all of the
problems that life brings with it… it is not God’s doing that we suffer rather,
it is the knowledge that God as a Father has also suffered, that helps us glean
any sense from the situation we face. We can approach God with humility, trusting
in his favour, however bad it gets, even unto death because of what he has endured.
I heard it said recently
that life is about suffering-its how we deal with suffering that matters. Or as
Jean Luc Picard, Captain of the Enterprise once recalled:
“Someone once told me that time is a predator that stalks us all our lives. But maybe time is also a companion who goes with us on our journey, and reminds us to cherish the moments of our lives because they will never come again. We are after all, only mortal.”
There are other situations that we all face, where we stem similar discontent with the life experiences we have. I celebrate today (12th August, 2014), 19 years of marriage, yet I can still feel insecure and terribly lonely. Even when my own contribution to living my life well seems to flatter the lives of others and there is a real sense of synergy and emotion to the shared experience of life, I can still feel joyless or even miserable, for no apparent reason.
My inner voice is always telling me that ‘I am not good enough, or no-one is listening to you; you will never be successful…’ it is emotionally painful.
My heart resonated with a story today in the life section of the Guardian on-line, that according to the relationship charity Relate, one in ten adults do not feel that they have a close friend or they simply feel unloved. While many (85%) felt that they had good relationships, 19% felt that in the two weeks leading up to their participation in the survey, that they felt unloved in those relationships. Only this week, I experienced these emotions when my wife returned from a four day trip with some girlfriends.
We parted on the
Thursday with some unresolved issues in how our relationship had become a bit
routine and functional since our Venice trip. On my wife’s return, she was
tired and had a stomach upset. Observing that we were in the process of doing
dinner after church, she felt that she didn’t want to interrupt us, so set
about unpacking. I interpreted this as showing a lack of emotion or joy at
returning home. Bottom line was, I wanted a hug and ‘I missed you.’
Now my
psychological perspective could easily go two ways. Either I could see this as
rejection and a continuation of how things were before she left for her trip,
or I could speak to her and find out what was going on; express my feelings
before I dwelt on them for too long, and reconcile the differences. It is
important that I make the choice to do this and work on why I felt the way I
did. So you can see how the story in the Guardian resonated with me because it
could fuel the fire of my emotions without me knowing the truth of what was
actually going on.
It would be easy
for me to dwell on how I feel, and internalise this as a form of rejection… One
stat which did catch my eye, pandering immediately to my automatic negative
reaction, was that 9% of UK adults do not have a single close friend – the voice
again in my head stating, “That’s you, that is… Didn’t God promise to
heal you of this emotional baggage? He hasn’t yet? Must be something you’ve
done then.”
Of course, as a
Christian, I believe that this isn’t true – God heals completely. So why the
delay in my emotions and my thinking when responding to the negativity of my
thoughts and what I know is true of God. Does the way that I ‘still am’ reflect
God’s apparent inaction? Automatic negative emotions provide many of us with
enough ammunition to arm our mental health with a sense of guilt, shame,
remorse, and sorrow.
These are all powerful emotions that energise our responses to the situations we face, as much as the more positive emotions of love and grace which we tend to overlook. “I will not allow that person to hurt me again… I would be better off working on my own… I’m not prepared to be lectured on how I want to live my life… no one has the authority to tell me how I should live my life or what I should do…”
These are all powerful emotions that energise our responses to the situations we face, as much as the more positive emotions of love and grace which we tend to overlook. “I will not allow that person to hurt me again… I would be better off working on my own… I’m not prepared to be lectured on how I want to live my life… no one has the authority to tell me how I should live my life or what I should do…”
When we try to
control our environment, emotionally or otherwise, we seek reward for the
success that our endeavours bring to our lives, our careers, our families and
our circle of influence, our authority or the status we have attained, or the
respect we command in our respective fields. When we fail to control our
circumstances, our psychology is always at odds with how we deal with the
emotion. As DATA, the android from STAR STREK reflected when speaking to Counsellor Troi:
DATA: At first I was unprepared for the unpredictable nature of the emotions. However having experienced two hundred and sixty-one distinct emotional states, I believe I have learned to control my feelings. They will no longer control me.
TROI: Well, I hope you're successful, Data.
...Data, over here, I've found something.
...One life sign, very faint.
DATA: Spot! ...I'm very happy to see you, Spot.
TROI: Another family reunited.
...Data, ...are you all right?
DATA: I am uncertain, Counsellor. I am happy to see Spot, and yet I am crying. Perhaps the chip is malfunctioning?
TROI: I think it's working perfectly.
(STAR TREK: Generations, 1994)
It is more often
the case, as in the quote from DATA, that when we feel we are in control and
have full command of our lives, something erroneous comes along to shake us to
our core. Many can become attuned to these circumstances, trying to deal with
them without calling on a Devine agent to intervene. Whilst others who have no
notion of a God, demand that God does something. Our emotional pain calls out,
grasping out at the cruelty of the world, the injustice, the suffering, blaming
anything else for the pain we feel, except for the obvious circumstance that we
face.
I cannot comprehend Ukraine, Israel, Gaza, Syria, Iraq, Ebola… there seems no end to the inhuman struggle that these people face every hour of every day; the continued suffering of ordinary people, with the very real prospect that someone will have died as I write this sentence, is too traumatic to comprehend – here’s me, withering on about automatic negative emotions, while someone is being butchered.
If I was living
in Mosul today, I would not renounce my faith, but would my love for my family
and desire to protect them, make me react differently under fire. The IS
fighters would immediately recognise my allegiance to Yahweh due to my clothing
and clean shaven appearance. I do not look anything but western: My fate would
be humiliation and death… My wife and children would become part of the
forgotten 1 million Christians who have left Iraq since the 2003 allied bombing
campaign Desert Storm.
Each solution or
action, mandate or ceasefire, seems to conflict with too many variables to be
certain of any lasting change or security for the indigenous population. I’m
not certain that there can be a lasting human solution, as we read of the
atrocities that are playing out before us on the various news feeds around the
world. The genocide of an oppressor over an oppressed people, has an all too
familiar feel to it.
Let’s be frank
about this. This is not a Godly war. Just as those exasperated by the
circumstance that befall us, cry out to God, ‘Where are you?’ we can be
certain that in each situation we witness around the world, as fellow human
beings, we stand alongside the oppressed, the downtrodden, the victimised, and God
also stands with you. Where? One might ask. He stands alongside every human
heart. He experiences what you experience; he feels what you feel. “Well
how can he?” you might cry out, “Where is he?”
The answer from
the Christian faith is that God the father is revealed in his son Jesus, not
just some prophet, hallucination or made-up figure head or deity, but a real
person. God’s son. This is what separates the Christian faith from all other
world religions; faith is NOT about US, it’s ALL about HIM. There is nothing
that man can do to believe that he is worthy to represent God’s will on the
earth. It is certainly not the bullet – this is man’s doing, his technology.
Many claim to
represent the will of God and have been found wanting… indeed, they have been
found to lack the fundamental of Godly leadership: humility, righteousness,
justice and peace, but above all hope. The truth is that Jesus came to serve.
He came to seek out and rescue all those who are lost. He doesn’t achieve this
through oppression, totalitarianism and the autocratic control of a population
through a central spokesman declaring himself to be chosen. No, God works
through the still small voice found in the human heart.
When Elijah had
defeated Jezebel’s pagan worship through a demonstration by God of his power
and authority in 1 Kings 19, he immediately fled to safety because he feared
the reprisal of Jezebel. God finds Elijah in the cleft of a rock, a cave, where
he encounters God as he goes by. God doesn’t exist in great displays of
supernatural wonder even though this is part of his armoury and we can experience
it through the power of the Holy Spirit. No, Elijah’s experience of God was the
still, quiet voice, reassuring him of his place and his purpose in God’s story
and in his restoration to his rightful place as leader of his generation.
“Go out and stand before me on the mountain,” the Lord told him. And as Elijah stood there, the Lord passed by, and a mighty windstorm hit the mountain. It was such a terrible blast that the rocks were torn loose, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake there was a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. After the fire there was the sound of a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his cloak and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave.”(1 Kings 19:11-13)
God asks Elijah
why he was hiding away, to which he replied (paraphrase), ‘I’m scared, everyone else has
been murdered, those that remain, reject you as their God and I am the only one
left.’ This is a good description of how the Christians in Iraq must
feel today under the hand of IS? You see, God knows the folly of human
endeavour and he knows how much we can bear. If we remain true to him, even
death can be faced with dignity because we know that death is not the end.
We have dressed up our human nature with all kinds of justified hatred towards our fellow man but in the end, we are all fearful of showing weakness, paranoid of failure and so, we play out the story lines of history as though nothing has changed. “Our military action is justified because…”
God see’s all of
this and sent Jesus as a symbol of hope. That is why I would not be able to
renounce my faith if I was a Christian in Mosul. By all accounts, my wife and
children could be beheaded, sold as slaves or raped. Even if I declared Allah
and his Prophet Mohammed as holy, I would still be executed. Renouncing my
faith would not change the evil. Some blame religion on all of the wars we have
ever fought, but I'm not sure. I don’t believe that the pagan god’s of the Pharaohs, Persians,
Hellenists or Romans, were used as the inspiration for their bloody campaigns. Their gods do seem to provide a sort of superstitious form of strength, to
enable those with a will to conquer or subjugate others, to do so. Indeed, the
Romans believed it was the Christians and their allegiance to Christ that
unravelled their once glorious empire, until Emperor Constantine made
Christianity the faith of the empire.
Jesus stands
within our world history at odds with all those who would perceive to hold
authority or power over a conquered people. At Jesus’ birth, the Romans had
absolute authority over the law, demanding taxes for the security offered to
the Jewish people from Caesar. King Herod, holder of the monarchy of Israel, also
demanding loyalty and taxes. But the real power rested with the temple authorities
in Jerusalem. The High Priest controlled a temple guard alongside a High
Council of Pharisees, rabbis and teachers of the law, dictating how one should
live their life.
Into this
setting, God’s greatest intervention in the lives of the people he loves, is
revealed in the life of Jesus. As Elijah had protested many centuries before,
many had turned away from God. Jerusalem was a tinderbox of political,
religious, economic and social disharmony, as it appears to be today. Jesus
would use this to his advantage by being counter cultural. He could question the
inequality that existed as a result of the decline in the people’s moral and
ethical standards, and the corruption of the temple leadership. John the
Baptist came first, like Elijah before him, making a way for Jesus, calling the
people to repent; to turn away from lives that dishonour God.
Jesus upheld the
law of God while questioning the moral authority of each aspect of civilised
behaviour and the conduct by which he was being judged. Even to Pontius Pilate,
Jesus states that he, Pilate, could only dispense the law because his Father in
heaven allowed it. ‘Then Jesus said, "You would have no power over me at all unless
it were given to you from above. So the one who handed me over to you has the
greater sin."’ (John 19:11, NLT)
Today, we are
watching the very same thing happen before our very eyes. No longer are our
leaders acting out of principle; all too many are acting out of pure
pragmatism. Just as Jesus too was put on the cross because it was convenient to do so. The
Jewish leaders wanted rid of him, even though no crime had been committed, and
Pilate was caught in a blackmail trap where his non-compliance with the will of
the people, would be reported to Caesar. It had to be this way to show that man
was absolutely corrupted by sin. Jesus' response to sin gave him the moral authority to judge the
affairs of man... His novel solution was to be willing to pay for our mistakes, by hanging on
the cross.
We have seen a
great deal of social and political unrest within our recent history, similar to
that found in the crucifixion story. Our human nature seems indicative to a
mind-set for injustice, particularly if we don’t get our own way. The very idea
that we can ignore certain rules, laws, ethics or international conventions
when convenient, does not seem to dissipate with the passage of time.
The naturalist or scientific view of the world may be able to accommodate this type of unbalance by suggesting that this is purely natural selection in action; the survival of the fittest. The humanist would cling to their long held view, that religion is evil and it is the principle cause of the social intolerance that our society has to endure. Without religion, we would solve most of society’s problems. Without religion, this inhumanity we are witnessing today, wouldn’t exist.
The naturalist or scientific view of the world may be able to accommodate this type of unbalance by suggesting that this is purely natural selection in action; the survival of the fittest. The humanist would cling to their long held view, that religion is evil and it is the principle cause of the social intolerance that our society has to endure. Without religion, we would solve most of society’s problems. Without religion, this inhumanity we are witnessing today, wouldn’t exist.
The Historian
could point to countless examples of sectarian violence, dissent, and
non-conformism that does not have a religious context. Here the ideal could be
political, social constructivism or simple power mongering. Indeed, some might blame
colonialism on the fractious relationships of the populations that live in the
areas effected by recent conflict, than just religion per se. There are deeper
social issues to do with how we value each other, how we interact in community,
and how we show regard for alternative cultures and lifestyle choices, than
mere religion.
Some regarded Jesus' teaching to be a precursor to a violent insurgent conflict
with the Roman authorities; indeed, when the temple guard came to arrest Jesus
in the Garden of Gethsemane, prior to his trial, the disciples had but two
swords. One was held by Peter, who unsheathed it as though he was to fight his way
out of the situation in order to protect Jesus. Jesus’ mission was always one
of peace. In healing the guardsman’s ear, cut off by Peter’s clumsy lunge, Jesus
revealed that his mention of a sword in Luke 22:38, was not for violence or
armament, but a metaphor for the disciples to be on guard...
"Look, Lord," they replied, "we have two swords among us." "That's enough," he said.
Indeed, Jesus’
own response to his arrest and the ‘show’ trial conducted in the middle of the
night was an act to enable Jesus to be processed quickly. No grounds could be
established by the High Priest to authorise Jesus’ death, nor could witnesses
offer more than circumstantial evidence that could only be regarded at best, to be tantamount to
blasphemy.
Politics played
its part too. The Jewish leaders plotted to process Jesus through Roman law,
which they despised as much as Jesus himself. In order to get what they wanted,
the Chief Priest was willing to do a deal. God’s law prohibits murder – the
Passover celebration was about to take place and the Chief Priest and temple
authorities knew that they would be ritually unclean and unfit to take part in the
Passover celebration, if this matter was not processed swiftly.
It was
unthinkable to the Chief Priest, Pharisees, Sadducees and temple authorities,
to be absent from the Passover festivities, as this was a high profile, social
and political event used to affirmed their status and authority. Going to Pilate’s
home in the early hours of the Friday before the Sabbath, was risky,
particularly as the High Priest calls Pilate outside of his home. They wouldn’t
go in to the home of a gentile for fear of being ritually unclean. What an
insult to Pilate’s authority and a very risky political move. Pilate is
blackmailed into doing his duty and you know the rest of the story. If not read
the Gospel of John, chapters 18 and 19.
Jesus knew that
he was to become the focus for mankind’s schemes and political manoeuvring; he
knew that the religious authorities and his very own followers, were to offer
him up for death. Jesus spoke words of truth, life and reconciliation,
demonstrating the power of God through the many miracles he performed in front
of their very eyes. Yet they still chose to reject him for fear of what he represented.
Jesus went to his fate willing to do the will of God. His followers deserted him; he was brutally flogged, humiliated and his human weakness and brokenness was paraded in front of the people, as they called for his death while freeing the murderer, Barabbas in his stead. In Iraq today, IS fighters daub an Arabic letter ‘n’ for Nazarene, on the door of each Christian home, marking them out for execution.
On the cross,
Jesus suffered the most poignant of all of the events of that night. Hanging on
the cross, his body pummelled and broken, battling with asphyxiation,
dehydration and insurmountable pain, Jesus faced the sky and cried out: ‘My
God, My God, why have you abandoned me?’ (Matthew 27:46, NLT). Isn’t
this the cry we all use when faced with injustice? Why me God? Where are you
God..?’ The significant message for each one of us is that without God, we are truly
lost.
Jesus was tried
by godless people, blinded by their own self-importance, religious rules and
political wrangling. It had to be that way for him, but it doesn’t have to be
that way for us. Jesus went through the agony of his separation from his
heavenly Father so that we can be restored to God through his shed blood. His
sacrifice.
JESUS CONQUERING
THE GRAVE – IS A FACT. How do we know this to be true? Eyewitness accounts recorded in the final chapter of each of the Gospel stories and the book
of ACTs, reveal how when all hope was lost, Jesus who was thought to be dead, was resurrected to new life. The tomb was empty. Jesus visited his disciples,
ate with them and commissioned them to build his people into his church, with
all of its faults and failings.
In fact, the re-telling of the Gospel story was made possible through the lives of ordinary people like you and I. When all hope was lost, a few clung on to the truth of what Jesus taught... it was the women who found what had happened at the tomb, and it was the women who motivated the crestfallen disciples, hiding away in fear, just like Elijah, to spring into action.
It is the truth of these events about Jesus' death and resurrection that sets you free. No longer are we slaves to our sinful nature, we are free
to revel in the love of God and the gift of the eternal life he offers us. No
matter what life brings, knowing Jesus’ love for us, helps us to endure, just
as Jesus himself endured. In this world, many obstacles will come our way but
absolutely nothing can separate us from the love of God.
When IS fighters in Iraq crucifies
a Father, beheads his child and violates his wife, this is pure evil, of which
I cannot fathom in my western surroundings. All I know is that God is alongside each
grieving heart, sharing in our pain because he knows what life is like; it was
the same pain he felt when he saw his Son dying on the cross for our sake;
having to turn his back on him because of man’s sin.
Jesus himself
knew no sin. Although his mortal body died on the cross, the
resurrection of Lazarus in John 11, reveals that Jesus has Godly authority, to release us from the power of death. Death
could not hold Jesus; he rose victoriously to new life, conquering the fear of
death that has cursed mankind since we rejected the will of God in favour of our own. God had to set the punishment for our sin within
our own mortality, to prevent the perpetuation of our evil conduct. Life as we
know it here on earth therefore comes to an end, and we account for the lives
we have lived and the choices we have made before God our creator who loves us
more than we know and is desperate to show mercy.
Jesus makes it
possible for us receive God’s mercy and forgiveness because God loves the son. Whoever
the son loves, God extends his Grace towards restoring our hope for a
relationship with the Father and the Son for eternity.
"Those who accept my commandments and obey them are the ones who love me. And because they love me, my Father will love them. And I will love them and reveal myself to each of them." (John 14:21, NLT)Through accepting Jesus as saviour, we repent of the life we chose to live before we met him; that self-centred, egotistical life, choosing instead to become selfless, just as Jesus did, in the certain knowledge that God is Sovereign.
Those that choose
to go their own way, choose a life, separated from God, and all that goes with
an eternal life without love. It is unfathomable to me that one would want to
leave their fate in the hands of an unknown. Maybe that is where the recently
deceased Robin Williams chose to find solace? After a life entertaining us on
our screens and endearing him in our hearts with great fondness, Robin chose to
end his life. Mental health illnesses and addictions are this generations most malevolent
of enemies, seeking to rob us of life. This is why Christians believe in Jesus
so passionately: the enemy of this world wants to rob us of the abundant life
that God offers all those who accept his offer of grace.
Final thoughts...
Reflecting on
this eclectic blog, I have wanted so desperately to share that despite all
things, God still loves the world that he gave his only begotten son Jesus for.
Jesus left the heavenly realm and became a man. He become a sacrifice for us to
save us from ourselves. Whoever believes in Jesus will not perish, even when
faced with an IS gun, Israeli blockade or Hamas rocket. Even the deception of
our own mind cannot separate us from the love of God. Jesus came into the world
to remind us of God’s love towards us, not to judge us or to condemn us, but to
restore his creation.
Whatever it is
you are going through, I urge you to do one thing: Instead of becoming enraged
by God’s apparent inaction, turn the situation around. Perhaps you are ready to
say this prayer:
“God, if you are out there, come and introduce yourself to me. I am full of doubt, bitterness and resentment about what is going on in my life and the lives of those I care about. I am aware that some of the things that are happening are my own doing, but there are some things that are outside of my control and there is nothing I can do about them except ask you to intervene. I am sorry for the things that I have done that have harmed others and my own sense of peace, and I ask that you come rescue me and those I love, through the power of the Holy Spirit, Amen.”
If you have said
this prayer, I encourage you to start to pray specifically about the issue you
are facing. Ask God to protect you. Ask God to surround you with his love and
to put people and/or organisations around you to help. If you are not in a
church community, I again urge you to find one that best suits your personality
and can give you the support you seek. Above all though, as you experience
breakthrough in your life, give God the glory, he would like that.
