It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. Lamentations 3:22

The Lord's mercies can be hard to grasp sometimes in light of the tragic news flooding the newspapers and television broadcasts. People ask why the Lord doesn't put a stop to the murders, earthquakes, floods, diseases, and others evils that befall us. They listen to Satan's lies that the Lord is somehow not merciful and caring because all these things are happening. They look at all the hatred and misery and wonder why a good and merciful God doesn't just wipe out all the people responsible for it at once. They don't stop to think that they are among the people who might get wiped out.

A lot of these things are happening because Satan, his fallen angels, and people who sin and thereby assist him (whether they meant to or not) are bringing these things to pass. God has told His created beings what is and is not acceptable behavior, and he wants them to voluntarily agree with Him and adopt His standards of behavior. He created special classes of beings, the angels and humans, to have a free will beyond the programmed instincts of the animals, and He wants them to use it wisely. Unfortunately, some have chosen to violate God's will and deliberately make bad choices of conduct that hurt others around them.

God wants all the evils stopped even more than we do. He made us to live happy, fulfilling lives, not exploiting and being exploited by each other and the fallen angels following Satan. He pleads with us to stop sinning by our own choice, and to make that a permanent choice. He will gladly adopt us into His family and nurture and teach us to be loving, responsible people, but He won't force that choice on us.

We humans just won't get along with each other for long by our own choice, especially if it looks like it might be in our best interest to rob, enslave, or otherwise take advantage of someone else. We keep having genocidal wars, murdering thousands and destroying badly needed food and material goods, no matter how much suffering we inflict on each other. When another group of humans tries to intervene for "humanitarian purposes", it usually ends up as bad if not worse than the first conflict. Yet we just keep going on having wars and peacekeeping actions that never solve the problem, that of sin in the human heart.

We try to solve the food shortages by population control and end up with abortion policies. We try to solve civil rights problems with strong governments and laws and end up tyrannized by the government that is appointed to save us from ourselves. We try solving our problems every way we can think up, avoiding the obvious solution of turning to God for salvation and guidance even when it is the only short and long term solution that has ever worked for mankind.

God has been patiently sitting on His throne, sending His servants with the message of salvation and wisdom to deal with our problems, and we refuse His mercy. No human who had been spurned as often and as long as the Lord would still be trying to help, and yet He still tenderly calls to us to come to Him for mercy and help.

God is giving people the time and chance to choose to live His way, even though that means that they do commit lawless acts during that time. He wants us to be free by being self-controlled, not controlled by Him to the extent that we have no freedom to choose our actions.

A person's actions tell you what his beliefs and attitudes are really like. God can tell what is in someone's heart, but the rest of us learn it by what that person does, including that person himself. Many a time a person has learned a lesson the hard way, by doing something wrong and suffering the consequences.

For example, God has certainly told people not to commit murder often enough that it should be quite plain that he doesn't want any to happen. However, he wants people to choose not to murder on their own. If the chance of committing a murder does not exist, how would you ever tell if someone was going to resist the impulse to kill?

Death is part of the punishment for sin so that we won't be locked into an ever worsening pattern of sin for eternity if we choose to follow Satan instead of repenting and turning back to God. Death serves as a cutoff point where unrepentant sinners can no longer trouble others still making their decision, and where the saints finish their work and trials on the Earth. When death comes to people who would otherwise have had a bright life ahead of them, it underscores the evil that sin has unleashed upon us.

God doesn't want us to be happy in a sinful state so that we know that there is something seriously wrong about it. We experience sin from the actions of other humans and fallen angels so that we can make a decision about it based on our personal experience. Part of the punishment of the human race for Adam's and Eve's joining Satan's rebellion is that we are learning the Knowledge of Good and Evil the hard way, by seeing the effects of sin on us. God explained what sin was and the consequences of it to Adam and Eve before they ever had to face any test of whether or not they would obey Him. When Satan decided to persuade Adam and Eve to join him in sinning against God, he didn't choose murder to test their resolve to obey the Lord. He chose the theft of authority not given to them by God, to be shown by eating a piece of fruit that God had forbidden them to eat.

God had given them the whole planet full of food except for that one tree and its fruit that He had kept back from them. Hunger clearly wasnt't the motive. Eve told the Serpent what God had said about the tree with the addition of a warning not to touch it that God hadn't said, but she clearly knew that taking the fruit was wrong. Ignorance of God's will wasn't a factor, either. What Satan urged them to take was the same thing he had tried to steal, to become as God in God's place and to establish their own rules for living.

Adam and Eve chose to learn the Knowledge of Good and Evil the hard way, by disobeying God and plunging the human race into the middle of the civil war between God and Satan as part of Satan's kingdom. Their children have been learning the same lesson the same way, too often the hard way by sinning and reaping the consequences.

Other disasters take place because this world is cursed because of our ancestors' sins. The Creation groans with anticipation of release from the natural calamities that befall it now, and the storms, earthquakes, and other events will occur with increasing frequency and intensity as we approach the seven years of Tribulation.

God is giving the whole world fair warning that the time of mankind's testing and punishment is coming to an end. He will overrule their plans and Satan's plans and bring all sin to a halt soon. As bad as sin is and as badly as we have suffered from it, if it results in a world full of people who have learned their hard lesson and are willing to live sinless lives with their God and each other, it will be worth all the suffering in the end for an eternal life full of love and peace.

God is making the same plea to you that He makes to all humans: repent of your sins and rejoin My family. Jesus has paid the price to redeem you. All you have to do is ask for that pardon and submit to His Lordship as your King and Savior. Don't keep stumbling into sin and hurting yourself and others. Come to Me, and I will freely receive you and pardon your sins. Please pray this prayer:

Dear God, I'm sorry for my sins. I want to join your Heavenly family and I submit to King Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I renounce anything to do with Satan, his kingdom, and his ways. Please save me and adopt me as one of Your children. In Jesus' Name, Amen