God Only Knows
There is a support group out there for just about every social ill that infects mankind. People who have fallen victim to crime or disease, people related to victims, survivor’s, relatives of survivor’s and even criminals themselves have a place to go where they can talk to others who understand what they are going through. They understand because they have been through it themselves. They know the mind and emotions of the victim and the family because they themselves have been through it.
In these days there are many pains and sorrows. Great tragedy has hit upon the whole of the earth. There seems to be no place you can go to escape the danger, the pain, and the madness of mankind. Hate and retribution are on the lips of many of the people of this present world. The innocents are slaughtered with the unjust. There is neither rhyme nor reason and no one is comforted by revenge.
Amid the mourning I see well-intentioned souls trying to comfort the comfortless. Their weak and powerless words wound rather than heal. In the midst of all this madness they actually try and explain how God feels.
A grieving mother who has just lost her baby is told, "God must have needed another little angel."
Young men grieving the loss of family member are told they will receive great reward from God if they kill the infidels in suicide bombing.
Thousands of families who will never see the remains of their loved ones are told by high-minded zealots that God was punishing America for it’s sin when the World Trade Center came down.
Those same zealots tell us that AIDS is God’s punishment for the sin of homosexuality.
To all those who have said or thought such foolishness, I say, you do not know God. You don’t know how He thinks and you surely don’t know how He feels.
Have you sent your only son to a foreign land where you know he will be hated, tortured and killed? Have you sent your only son to his death so that the guilty could go free? At the very moment when your son needed you the most, did you turn your back on him because you have placed all the sins of the whole world on his shoulders and let him die, willingly?
No you haven’t, and until you do, don’t sit there and try and tell me how God feels because no one has the vaguest idea how great a love God has toward mankind.
When people say and do these things they aren’t interested in what God thinks or feels. They only want to make themselves feel better or serve some agenda. Even worse, they say them because they heard someone else say it and it sounded good to them, therefore it is worthy of repeating. They have no real conviction in their own lives so they borrow the platitudes of the masses to be politically correct and therefor innocent of offending anyone.
Matthew 10
34 Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.
35 For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law.
36 And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.
37 He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.
38 And he that taketh not his cross, and followeth after me, is not worthy of me.
39 He that findeth his life shall lose it: and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it.
Yet offend is exactly what God’s people should do. Shallow, self-serving hypocrites should be offended. They should be offended by the very life we lead. Not high-minded, not proud, but bold in our life style and witness of who Jesus Christ is today.
1 Corinthians 2
9 But as it is written, Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.
10 But God hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.
11 For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.
12 Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God.
13 Which things also we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth; comparing spiritual things with spiritual.
14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
15 But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man.
16 For who hath known the mind of the Lord, that he may instruct him? but we have the mind of Christ.
Having the mind of Christ doesn’t mean you know it all.
Philippians 2
3 Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves.
4 Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.
5 Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus:
6 Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God:
7 But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men:
8 And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.
That’s the mind of Christ. Humble and obedient to the Will of God, unto death.
Do you want to have the mind of Christ?
Then pick up your Cross and follow Jesus, humble and obedient servant.