Thinking about God, Jesus and The Big Questions

This question came up from my son, after we had prayed to God for a sick family member in hospital to be healed and she was healed. I was rejoicing that God answered the prayer, when my son asked me the very good question "How do we know that God answered our prayer and that it wasn't just coincidence or the doctors doing a good job?" It's true that we may never absolutely know beyond a shadow of a doubt. Yet I believe that if our prayer is in line with God's wishes (whose wishes we know more and more by getting to know God more), and if the prayer was answered, then it was God doing the action.  I still noted that my son's question was a very good one, and my answer went like this: "Not everything in life we will know for certain. But we are always most likely to be correct when we credit God for all of the good things and blame Satan for all of the bad things." In any one particular situation we may not necessarily know for 100% sure beyond a shado...

If we have a difficult decision, we can ask God. But it is harder to discern His answers and His will if we haven't already put in the time to get to know Him. One of my favorite examples in the Bible of knowing God's will (and there are many examples there) is King David. King David was human and by no means perfect, none of us are, but he did seek to know God. He knew God well enough to know His will and His desires for some situations - but not others, as you will see if you read 2 Samuel 11 where David had Uriah killed, against God's wishes. In the situation where David knew God's will, Saul had tried to kill David many times. If David had the opportunity to kill Saul, no-one would have blamed him for doing so. Yet David knew that this was not God's will. Let's take a look: Then David set out and came to the place where Saul had encamped; and David saw the place where Saul lay, with Abner son of Ner, the commander of his army. Saul was lying within the encam...

The people of Israel were asking for a king. God gave them the type of leader they wanted, which was King Saul. God warned the people about asking for such a king. The prophet Samuel was communicating to the people and to God: Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah, and said to him, “You are old and your sons do not follow in your ways; appoint for us, then, a king to govern us, like other nations.” But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, “Give us a king to govern us.” Samuel prayed to the Lord, and the Lord said to Samuel, “Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them. Just as they have done to me, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so also they are doing to you.  Samuel 8: 4-8 God warned the Israelites through Samuel that they would soon be in despair under the rule of this kin...

When so many bad things happen in the world, or to ourselves, it seems like these are cancelling out all the good things we are doing. Yet, this is not the right way to look at it - the good news is that we have a lot more hope and joy than it first seems. Even if you literally do something good, and someone literally goes and destroys it before anyone gets to see the good thing you did, your hard work is not wasted. Because God sees it, and ultimately you are answerable to God, not to the people who never got to see your work because it was destroyed.  The good and bad things do not cancel each other out; instead (here on Earth), they coexist. This is actually good news and offers some hope. No-one can take away your good work from you even if they physically destroy it, because God has already seen it, and He is the most important entity in the universe. There is strong Biblical evidence supporting this attitude. Let's take a look at the parable of the weeds among the wheat (Jesu...

I have become a little concerned by the attitude of some people that the spread of germs through a community is desirable to God - for example, the idea of not being concerned about catching (and therefore spreading) Covid. There is actually plenty of biblical evidence against that attitude. The book of Leviticus shows a lot of instructions for cleanliness, which back in those days the instructions may have seemed inexplicable. These may have seemed like a long list of things to be obedient about without a clear reason why. However, if we read this book of the Bible with our modern-day knowledge of bacteria, viruses and fungi, these instructions quickly make sense. The instructions were designed to avoid the spread of germs. Here is an example from the Bible of what to do with clothing (made of cloth, wool, or animal skin) that has a spreading disease in it. This referred to a discoloration such as mold or something similar: If the priest makes an examination, and the disease has not ...

When reading parts of the Bible, it feels like on some occasions God spoke very clearly. Sometimes we can feel discouraged that we don't hear Him so clearly today. As an aside, a huge part of this is that we are not listening, even if we think we are. To listen, we have to take the time to get to know God and to hear His voice, and how many of us do that?  But getting back to the title of this post, there are times in history where the Lord's word was rare and visions were not widely known, as shown in the Bible verse below. Does this resonate with you about the situation we see today? Now the boy Samuel was ministering to the Lord under Eli. The word of the Lord was rare in those days; visions were not widespread. 1 Samuel 3: 1 You may like to read the full verse in the Bible - this is where Samuel receives instruction from God. Yet at first neither he nor the priest Eli realize the voice is from God, because it was rare to hear from God in those days. We don't know precis...

I was reading the book of Exodus, and as always, was amazed at the logistics of how that many people were all traveling together. The number of Israelites were 603,550. This number came from a census that was taken while traveling in the desert: So the whole number of the Israelites, by their ancestral houses, from twenty years old and upward, everyone able to go to war in Israel— their whole number was six hundred three thousand five hundred fifty. Numbers 1: 45-46 Imagine over half a million people all traveling together. There are many passages in Exodus where logistical details are mentioned, for example that they would make camp when it was time to rest somewhere, and break camp when it was time to set off again. Nonetheless, I wondered how it worked for food, bathroom breaks, and so on. Having so many people go through an area would surely make it hard to get food, even when in areas where fruit and grain were growing naturally. Indeed, the Israelites started grumbling about the ...

Often in today's life, we have to decide which course of action to take, and during tricky situations it might feel like we are being torn in two different directions.  I'm not talking about the simpler case where one thing is good and the other is bad, and we need to withstand temptation to avoid going down the bad route.  No, instead I'm talking about being torn between two different things which are both good, but that are mutually exclusive (for example, that would require us to be in two different places at once). In this situation, it's even more frustrating to have that "caught in the middle" feeling because there isn't at first glance a strongly "correct" answer. When I was reading the Bible, I came across a clear occasion where Jesus had to discern between two opposing things also, which I'll illustrate below. Of course, since Jesus is the son of God, he has the advantage of perfect discernment, which we don't have. But we can fe...

Mary was a young woman of immense faith. She had been told by God through the archangel Gabriel what was going to happen, and even when things looked difficult for her, she didn't waver. When it was nearly time for her to give birth, there was no room at the inn, and yet she never doubted God's plan . I'm sure that most of us would have started doubting, if we had been in her position. After Jesus was born, she raised him in the way that she knew, and he learned the trade of his father, a carpenter. During this time, she may have been tempted to wonder "Why is he not with the priests and leaders?" And "Where is his special purpose?" Yet, she knew indeed there was a special purpose for Jesus, even if she didn't know herself what it was. Jesus didn't start His ministry until nearly 30 years of age. During this time, Mary didn't doubt. Indeed, she asked him to help the couple who ran out of wine during their wedding, and he turned water into win...

The End of Days has been covered in quite a lot of detail in the Bible. It is clear that there will be economic suffering in addition to oppressive leadership . There will also be a lot of physical suffering . I heard what sounded like a voice coming from among the four living creatures, which said, "A kilo of wheat for a day's wages, and three kilos of barley for a day's wages.  But do not damage the olive trees and the vineyards!" Revelation 6:6 The Bible verse above indicates an extremely expensive price for food. Could this occur via a route of climate change and/or ecological disaster? The answer is yes it's possible, but alternative routes are also possible. The Bible spells out the results of the end of days, but not the exact route it will happen. So we cannot know for sure the exact path it will take. As I have mentioned before, the Bible tells us THAT something will happen, but not HOW or WHEN . An illustration of a prophecy coming to pass is durin...

A common misconception is that God has a massively long list of boxes we must tick. He does not. He would much rather we seek him and get to know him personally, through prayer and reading the Bible.  He does not want us to merely go through the motions of attending church, and so on, just to tick the boxes.  This is evident in several parts of the Bible. You can see this from the prophet Hosea, and later, from Jesus himself.  In the book of Hosea, God says: For I desire steadfast love and not sacrifice, the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. Hosea 6: 6 It is clear from the above that God does not just want us to go through the motions, but rather he wants us to seek him and know him personally. Yet the ten commandments exist, and of course if we truly believe in God, then we truly believe in the ten commandments. So do these commandments then become a set of boxes that we need to tick? The answer is that all of the commandments stem from a love of God, as you...

In this present day, unfortunately we all hear of a lot of misinformation. I'm not going to even attempt to say which things are incorrect. Instead, I'm going to point out the importance of recognizing wisdom and discernment. This is something that only God can help us with. Do not assume that just because someone is successful in one area, that they are wise. They may have a lot of knowledge or success by societal standards, but that does not automatically mean they have discernment . Discernment is knowing what to do in a particular situation, and being able to recognize truth from lies, among other things. I see wisdom and discernment as more or less the same thing. Knowledge is book-learning, which is also important, but it is possible that someone can have knowledge without necessarily having wisdom.  Having discernment can definitely make your life a lot easier. It makes it a lot easier to see a Godly path through difficult situations. I wish I had more discernment than I...

Doomsday bunkers will not protect anyone at the End of Days. Between now and the End of Days, there will be natural disasters, war, and other horrible things. Although doomsday bunkers will exist, they certainly won't protect anyone from the End of Days. Two prophets in the Bible have clearly prophesied about people hiding underground at the End of Days. Let's take a look at these two different readings from the Bible. One is from the prophet Isaiah, before the birth of Jesus, and the other is from the prophet John of Patmos, in the book of Revelation, the final chapter of the Bible. These different prophets from distinctly different time periods both have the same message for us: Enter the caves of the rocks and the holes of the ground, from the terror of the Lord, and from the glory of his majesty, when he rises to terrify the earth. On that day people will throw away to the moles and to the bats their idols of silver and their idols of gold, which they made for th...

Keeping the main thing, the main thing is a challenge. It is all too easy to look backward and forget to keep our eyes on what is important. The writer of Philippians makes this very clear for us: that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.  Philippians 3: 11-14 I particularly love what he wrote "But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead"... This is a vision we should all have. Our goal should be always to go forward toward God. In fact, often we don't feel like we can or should go forward to God because our sins are too great. But this t...

The book of Proverbs is the combined knowledge of generations of people, and much of it is the collected sayings of King Solomon, who was the wisest man ever to live. The Bible specifically says that no man wiser than Solomon has come before him nor will come after him. This is shown in the book of Kings, where Solomon asks God for wisdom. Here we see God's reply: God said to him, “Because you have asked this, and have not asked for yourself long life or riches, or for the life of your enemies, but have asked for yourself understanding to discern what is right, I now do according to your word. Indeed I give you a wise and discerning mind; no one like you has been before you and no one like you shall arise after you. 1 Kings 3: 11- 13 We see here than Solomon was granted wisdom by God. Assuming he is the wisest man ever to have lived, then if we desire to follow words of wisdom we should pay particular attention to the parts of the Bible that are attributed to Solomon. These writing...