John David Clark / Sr. Suffering and the Saints

1. Auflage 1989
ISBN: 978-1-934782-25-5
Verlag: Seven Pillars
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 216 Seiten

You are hurting. You have suffered a crushing loss. You have been disappointed, misunderstood, betrayed. What are you to do? What are you to think? ---- I learned much about what to do during times of suffering from the old saints who led me to Christ. In turbulent times, I marveled at their steady spirits, their sincerity, kindness, and faith in the far of cruelty and skepticism. One example is worth a mountain of words. Of even more value than seeing good being done, however, is understanding why it is right to do good, for it is understanding that gives us the strength to persevere in well doing. This is the beauty of the stories of faith that you will read in this book. Not only are men and women seen doing good in desperate situations, but the reason they did good is explained. So, by knowing what they knew, we can do what they did, and be what they were. Travel these pages with me and stand in awe of the goodness, power, and wisdomof God by which the saints of old met and over the suffering that God had give them to endure.

Autoren/Hrsg.

John David Clark, Sr.

Sr.,

Leseproben

CHAPTER 2 THE CREATOR He left not Himself without witness, in that He did good, and gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with gladness. Acts 14:17 1. THE GOODNESS OF GOD An astute and witty observer of life has speculated that the last reality a fish would discover is water. A fish could easily notice the water plants swaying with the currents, and other fish gliding around him, he could easily see. Sol’s bright light and the dark floor beneath him, any fish would perceive. Even garbage tossed into the fish’s home would attract his attention. But that unseen, life-sustaining, life-enveloping substance surrounding him, that absolute necessity for his very existence – water – a fish might never discover at all. Of course, this is a parable concerning mankind. For in a sense which is not far from literal, we all swim out our lives in the pervasive, sustaining, enveloping goodness of God. To the philosophers of Athens, Paul said of God, “He gives to all life, and breath, and all things, … that they should seek the Lord, if perhaps they might feel after Him and find Him, though He be not far from any of us. For in Him we live, and move, and have our being.” Acts 17:25b, 27-28a As with the fish, the mundane realities of our world hardly escape our notice. Other people and the concerns of daily living demand much of our attention. Human garbage, literal and figurative, is commonly and easily seen. But that upon which our very life rests, that “first cause”, that elementary reason for our being – the goodness of God – is often among the last things realized or appreciated by men. Some, alas, never discover it at all. Nevertheless, it is only of God’s goodness that life on earth continues. It is God “who gives rain upon the earth, and sends waters upon the fields” (Job 5:10). It is God who “makes His sun to rise upon the evil and the good” (Mt. 5:45). He causes grass to grow for the cattle, and herbage for the service of man, that he may bring forth food out of the earth, and wine that makes glad the heart of man, and oil to make His face to shine, and bread which strengthens man’s heart. Psalm 104:14-15 How true are David’s words: “The earth is full of the goodness of the LORD” (Ps. 33:5)! Because God Is Good If mankind merely evolved, if our existence is the result of pure chance, then we are not alive because God chose for us, especially, to live. If mankind is simply another plateau of an ongoing evolutionary process, then God is just as pleased that we not be, is just as pleased that some other temporary specimen of evolutionary impulse exist in our stead. There is not in that case any bond of love between God and man. It is said that in the evolutionary scheme, the odds against our coming to exist are virtually incalculable. Certainly, anyone who could, and then would have stacked the odds against us to that degree could not have been eager for us to live, could not have dearly loved and provided for our kind. But God did create us. And He created us only because He wanted to create us. It is of immense spiritual value for us to appreciate that truth. In creating us, God was coerced by nothing. He had nothing suggested to Him and was advised by no one as to how or to what extent Creation was to be accomplished. Whatsoever the LORD pleased, that did He in heaven, and in earth, in the seas, and all deep places. Psalm 135:6 We human beings did not have to be. There were no laws of physics which demanded our formation. We exist only because God wanted us. Out of the endless possibilities available to His mind, God chose for us to be. Of His own heart, He conceived the idea of man, and then He made a conscious choice that man should live. We are creatures of His design, our contours fashioned by His hand. And grace upon grace, He was pleased to bestow upon man the sacred honor of being created in His own image. Man has dignity and wisdom and dominion in the earth because it pleased God to give it to him. We are man only because God is good. On Purpose It is compellingly clear that God created what He wanted to create, no less and no more. On the seventh day, God did not scan with remorse His completed Creation, ruefully wishing He had done something better or differently. Quite the opposite is true. As the sun lowered upon the sixth and final day of Creation, God paused to look, and God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good. Genesis 1:31 In accordance with this, we must acknowledge that when God created man, He created man the way He wanted man to be. It pleased the Creator to make man healthy and sinless and to give him dominion on earth. It was His heart’s desire that man should be greatly and continually blessed. There is comfort available to us in the knowledge that God created man well and happy on purpose. Those of greatest faith believed that the goodnesses of God – His mercy, His justice, His compassion, etc. – were as certain as life, for life itself was irrefutable proof of it. In whatever evil circumstance they found themselves, they could not surrender hope, for they had committed their lives to the care of their almighty, unchanging Creator, believing that His will, as it was in the beginning, is that mankind should be happy, healthy, and pure. 2. THE POWER OF GOD As Creation itself is the surest and most constant witness of the Creator’s goodness, so it is with His terrible power. That God wanted to create is one thing, but that God could create what He wanted is altogether another. To believe in God as Creator is to believe in a good God of incalculable power and authority. So awesome is His creative power that God cannot lie. It is a power so terrible that whatever God says, is. Even the breath that proceeds from His lips performs deeds. And the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. Genesis 2:7 By the word of the LORD were the heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth… . Let all the earth fear the LORD! Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him! For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast. Psalm 33:6, 8-9 The magnificent implications of this truth are being decreasingly appreciated because (1) the doctrine of Creation is increasingly allegorized or neglected and (2) we confuse ourselves by applying the term “creative” or “creator” to men. Biblically, to speak very strictly, it is idolatrous to believe that man or any other created being can create anything. Man can invent. Man can rearrange particles of what God has created, and they can come up with many clever devices, as Solomon noted (Eccl. 7:29b), but he cannot create anything. But there is only one Creator, and there is none other even remotely like Him. Any being who can lie cannot create. No Other Source King David’s reflection upon the power of the Creator which was demonstrated in His Creation inevitably led him to marvel at God’s providence for men. Of particular interest was God’s delegation of power to the beings which He had created. “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars which you have ordained, what is man, that you are mindful of him? or the son of man, that you visit him? For you made him a little lower than the angels, and crowned him with glory and honor. You made him to have dominion over the works of your hands; you have put all things under his feet.” Psalm 8:3-6 As David observed, man’s dominion on earth was graciously granted by God. The great King Nebuchadnezzar was given the mind of an animal, and for seven years, he ate grass with cattle in the fields until he learned, in Daniel’s words, “that the most High rules in the kingdom of men, and gives it to whomsoever He will” (Dan. 4:25). But concerning dominion and the delegating of authority by God, there is much more to be considered than governments of men. For just as certainly as man would be powerless on earth had God not given him power, the same may be said of every other creature in every other realm. Whether earthly power, heavenly power, or powers of spiritual darkness, all life and all power exist only by the will of the Creator. There is no other source. Every physical or spiritual strength of man, of nature, of fallen or faithful angels – even the power of Jesus Christ himself – all power, all authority, and all strength is subservient to God’s power. No person, beast, or spirit has any power of his own or has received power ultimately from any source other than God. It came from God. It is a gift from God. And all creatures, great and small, carnal and spiritual, owe Him all fear and thanksgiving for it. To fail to pay that debt is sin. To Bless Or To Curse Numerous gods with various fabricated personalities were worshipped and feared in the ancient world. Not just the way of isolated barbarians, polytheism dominated the entire ancient history of man. The learned and the ignorant, the noble and the base, governors and the governed – virtually all men in all nations – were immersed in this kind of spiritual darkness. The dying request of Socrates, an intellectual giant among men, was that an offering be made to the god...