I feel like I had a revelation last night...Well, let me start at the beginning. My life has not been the same since my trip to Africa in 2008. I know I've kind of written about this in the past, but I never really had an answers to my questions. And now I do!!!
So, just a quick recap. In Africa, seeing all the hurt, all the pain, all the innocent children dieing. Starving. I was torn apart. And since then I have struggled with how God could be a God of love and let this happen. Yes, I know all the answers and it's not Gods "fault" there is hurt. We live in a fallen and sin filled world.
While in Africa, I was determined to find in my bible how much God loves us. Well, for some reason I decided to start in the old testament and try to figure out what the heck went wrong. I ended up reading about Noah and the flood. And in Genesis 6:7 is says "So the Lord said, "I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, creeping thing and birds of the air, FOR I AM SORRY THAT I HAVE MADE THEM."
I was SO mad!!!! I basically felt like He already knew we weren't going to be perfect in the first place so why did He even bother if He was going to be so sorry! I guess since then I have kept tabs of every single thing I've done wrong and am consistently reminded of how I have fallen short and continue to make mistakes.
Well, I've been reading this book called Destined to Reign by Joseph Prince (Thank you Dad) and things finally made sense!
He basically said that those of us who believe God is sometimes angry with us are still living under the old covenant of the law and not under the new covenant of grace. That under law, God demanded righteousness from man. And that under grace God provided righteousness for man. That under law, everything depended on man and his obedience. But under grace, everything depends on Jesus and what He did on the cross.
I guess that even though I know all this stuff in my head, it just finally clicked. I still don't understand why Jesus couldn't have just been there from the beginning and we could have just scratched the old law from the get go. But maybe we would have never fully understood Grace?
1 comment:
+1 to "But under grace, everything depends on Jesus and what He did on the cross."
Jesus is often seen as radical, when perhaps he is the most perfect normal. He continually exercises Love, Compassion, Mercy, etc. Perhaps the radical lies in the change that mankind made in turning away from God.
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