Faith

What am I doing here? Who am I to be giving the Gospel to others? Why would God use me? Why should people listen to me?

I imagine that most Christians have asked questions like these when seeking to obey Christ and witness. When these thoughts come, what we do with them becomes extremely important. If we allow ourselves to dwell on our weakness, we will witness less and ineffectively, if we witness much at all.

It’s often said that “fear not” is the most repeated command in the Bible. The claim is also made that there are 360 instances of the command, nearly one for each day of the year.

I don’t know how they arrived at that number. KJV has the phrase “fear not” more than any other English translation, and Logos finds it only 63 times. Expanding the search string to “fear not” OR “do not fear,” ESV has the largest count at only 70 occurrences.

Read Part 1.

God can seem impersonal and heartless. Who has not begged God for relief, even if no more than for a few drops of water on a parched tongue, only to hear the silence of heaven? Maybe the deists are right. Maybe God wound up the clock of this world and walked away. Maybe no one answers because no one is there.

You may be thinking, why start a series on knowing God through suffering with the most abstract and difficult doctrine known to Christians? Why not start with something simpler, like mercy or faithfulness? All in due time.

Read Part 1.

If God has ordained my suffering, what can I do about it? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Well, nothing about my circumstances, but I can do something about my heart.

“So, this is it. This is how I’m going to die,” I thought as I kneeled over the toilet in my underwear, waves of pain slamming my stomach. For the sixth time in two weeks I was experiencing unbearable pain, caused by the lemon-size tumor in my small bowel. What I didn’t know was that it had almost completely blocked my intestine and that I would be in the hospital within the hour. It would be my first of four stays in the hospital, culminating two months later in emergency surgery to fix a perforated bowel.

When God brought judgment on Ahab and Israel in the form of drought and famine, he sent Elijah to a secluded retreat somewhere along the Brook Cherith (1 Kings 17). During this period, God’s care for Elijah reveals an interesting pattern. The details are memorable and exceptional, but the pattern is not.

And the ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening, and he drank from the brook. (ESV, 1 Ki 17:6)