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 ...