Good morning DPR, I trust our weekend was fun, and i hope we are enjoying the new series on Prayer? We established in the last post that God is not the controller of everything that happens on earth. This wrong mindset about the sovereignty of God has been responsible for sending away a lot of “would have been Christians”, simply because they can’t seem to reconcile how a God who “claims” to be good would also be responsible for the famines, disasters, poverty and depression in the world today. God is good, as a matter of fact, the Bible says “Surely Good Is God Unto Israel”, Psalms 73:1. This is the basis for our prayers; that God is our Father and He has great and good plans for us, hence we simply ask Him to move in our behalf based on our confidence in His love for us. I know for some who have fixated their theology on how God does evil things, they would have brought up numerous scriptures in their mind especially from the old testament to prove that God actually does evil. I actually realise I might not be able to convince everyone otherwise on this very issue of the sovereignty of God, but again, my responsibility is to teach the Word, yours is to hear or in this case, read, The Holy Spirit does the conviction. The reason why I’m taking some time to undo these mindsets we might have had in time past is because the misconception of the sovereignty of God is chiefly responsible for unanswered prayers. Many people are tormented by the enemy, and instead of them to resist the devil with their Authority in Christ, they say things like “Maybe this is God’s way of punishing me for the sin I committed in my JSS2 when I lied to that senior”, or “God is testing me like Job, to be a good Christian”, or “God is getting glory out of this”. God doesn’t get glory out of shame, disease and poverty. Before we talk about praying the appropriate kinds of prayer, we must understand the nature of this God we claim to be praying to. God is not evil, does no evil and would not tempt anyone with evil.
James 1:13(KJV) Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man:
Jesus always related the concept of prayers with our perception of God as our Father.
Matt 7:9 (KJV) Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give him a stone? 10 Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? 11 If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?
Here Jesus made a clear distinction between Man’s nature and God’s nature. He said as evil as man is, he knows how to give good gifts to his children, how much more God (who is good) give good gifts to them that ask. Sometimes we seem to have more faith in our goodness as men than in the God whose nature is LOVE. Now why does he wait for us to ask? Because He can’t move in our lives without our permission, as much as the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, Jesus still knocks the door of every man’s heart to seek permission to come in and dine with him, Rev 3:20… That is how much respect God has got for the will of man. So back to asking/praying… what we ask and how we ask is all hinged upon our perception of Him as our Father. I know there are several scriptures that portray God as evil and mean, especially in the old testament… But here is my thought on that. For a long time, i did not know how to relate with God, it felt to me like God had moodswings… In one place i see him killing Egyptians, in another place, He kills Uzzah, then another time, He blesses Obed edom, and then somewhere else promotes Modecai. It looked like God had multiple personality disorder and one couldn’t really be sure which side one would meet when one prayed to Him or fellowshipped with Him. So i began to really DESIRE to know Him, because Jer 9:23-24, Phil 3: 8-10 urges us to give priority to the knowledge of God far above riches, wisdom and strength. So i began spending copious amount of time in the Word and listening to other men of God. I soon discovered that indeed God is the same yesterday, today and forever and He never changed for once. He is the same way He was in the old testament, right now in the new. He never changed, but how come we had a seemingly mean and evil view of Him in the old testament? God has always been LOVE, and HE would always be. Our experiences are not strong enough proofs to make Him deny Himself.
1 John 4:7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.8 HE THAT LOVETH NOT KNOWETH NOT GOD; FOR GOD IS LOVE.
I will try to explain with this illustration. If a person is sick and desperately needs to be rescued with a surgery. The surgery involves cutting off a part of the body so as to save the life of that person… Because leaving the infected part uncut will eventually affect other parts and cause death. Would cutting that part of the body be evil or good? Judge for yourself. So here is the gist, Man was created and given dominion as well as some instructions, he disobeyed and sinned, with sin came death and its other consequences like sickness, poverty and oppression, Romans 5:12. God could not just do an “abrakadabra” to restore man to his glorious estate, that would have been unjust and God is not unjust. So He picks up a people on earth (Israel) and begins to relate with them the way He would the New Creation, but they were very sinful and had not His nature so sin kept them in bondage to satan, God could only proffer annual albeit insufficient remedies until the the emergence of Christ. No matter how much they tried to do right, they just couldn’t measure up… They needed Redemption desperately, but God couldn’t do it in a hurry. It was to take Him another 4000 years to make it happen. God’s righteousness demands that only a sinless man can redeem and deliver these people from their sins, so he preserved a lot for himself from where this sinless man would emerge. He kept getting rid of some of the ones who wouldn’t make that emergence a reality, because than sinless man had to be born in order to finally put a final STOP to the reign of satan and restore man to his original position. All they could handle was the Law because they had not the nature of God, and even that Law made them fall short even more, but this sinless man would later come with Grace which would cause God’s nature to be inputed in their hearts. Everything you read about God killing and destroying are not true representations of His nature; LOVE. As a matter of fact, in the original renderings of those passages, most of those terms were in the permissive sense and not in the causative. God created all things including lucipher (who later became the devil), the devil only tries to pervert the things God creates. Somehow the devil has succeeded in making God look like the bad guy, and we’re buying that lie. A kingdom divided against itself CAN NEVER stand. GOD’s kingdom would have to self-destruct if He were casting out what (devils, sicknesses and diseases) He commissioned in the first place, but glory to God, He rules and reigns FOREVER. As a creator, God created ALL things including the knowledge of good and evil, but in the new creation, God is our Father and that’s all He wants us to know Him as. The old testament folks had no privilege to call Him Father, but we do. Our Father does no evil, thinks no evil and tempts no man with evil. We must relate with the old testament through the new testament lens, else we will get His nature all wrong. We will do ourselves a lot of good by focusing on the Nature of God as Father and stop asking questions that breed endless geneologies and engender preconceived arguments. A man with an experience will NEVER be at the mercy of a man with an argument. God is Good, God is Light and God is my Father… He has nothing else to give me apart from good. Hallelujah
1 John 1:1 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life;…5 This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
James 1:17 (KJV) Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning
My apologies about the length today. Have a wonderful week ahead, and don’t forget to share across your social media platforms, people need to know this. 🙂
6 comments
hmmmmm.. so true! God is good all the time and His love endures forever!!!
God is ever good and tests no man with evil. Word! Thank you sir
Hmmn. It really can never be too long
PAST, more wisdom sir God has used you to change my perspective. God bless you real good
Thanks mum…*smiles* You’re the best.
Wow!!! This piece is indeed an eye opener… James 1:13. More unction on you sir.