John Markum

God isn’t Angry

As a follower of Christ, there have been times where I felt like I was a huge disappointment… to God, my family, myself. “How could God ever bless my life? I mean, look at me! He must be so angry at me. I wouldn’t blame Him. I’m angry at ‘me’ too.”

I’m so grateful that God tells us in Isaiah 55, “So high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways, and my thoughts above your thoughts.” God doesn’t look at us the same way we look at each other, or even ourselves. As followers of Jesus we will fall, but we are never out for the count because “the Lord upholds us with His hand.” In 1 John 1 and 2, the Apostle John writes to other brothers and sisters in Christ and challenges them to live to the potential that God has placed in them. He tells us to “walk in the light as He is in the light.” But he acknowledges that we will occasionally fail, and in 1 John 1:9 gives us the answer to our sin as followers of Jesus, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from every wickedness.” James tells us that if we will “draw near to God” He will “draw near to you.” God has already poured His anger on His Son Jesus Christ, for our sin. We are free from God’s righteous anger. Because of Jesus, we now have access to God and His love, mercy, forgiveness, and healing.

I can be at my best with God in a matter of minutes when I come to Him for forgiveness and healing. We don’t have to live in fear of the anger of God. We just need to focus on being in a right relationship with the One who took the wrath of God on Himself for us. By doing this, we will “be in the light, as He is in the light.”

Blessings,

John

The GOOD in man

I have to retrain the way I see people. Allow me to explain…

Church, as I have known it for the majority of my life, has had a bad outlook on humanity at large. From a spiritual standpoint, we would argue the “depravity” of mankind as evidenced by our observations of society. The world is full of sin, crime, hate, and immorality. To be sure, Scripture supports that condition of the world. But what is so startling, is that according to the Gospel that Jesus-freaks like me claim to believe, God loves this world. Not to say that He loves what this world is doing to itself, but He nonetheless loves “the world.” Every stranger to me, every rude person in traffic, every loud mouth in the checkout line ahead of me wasting my time, every adulterer, liar, white-collar criminal, religious hypocrite, drunkard, and promiscuous teenager is a soul that God values.

Counter to what some Bible “scholars” may state, there is something in humanity that God loves, desires, and finds good in. Genesis 1:26 tells us that God created man “in His image,” and despite the sin, rebellion, and brokenness of our planet, God finds something good in each human being simply because we bear His image. Marred, muddied, and cracked as it may be, we resemble our Creator. While no amount of noble attempts can change our eternal destination apart from Christ, there are moments of good in human beings: charities to cure disease and provide sustenance, strangers helping strangers, even little courtesies hint of the moral conscience imbued to man by their Creator. And sinful and broken as man may be, God finds pleasure in cleansing, restoring, and remaking His fallen creation into the image of His Son.

On a personal level, what does that mean for me and you? Do I tolerate all of the “miserable sinners” that make up my world? Or do I see inside of each stranger that I encounter the image of their Creator who loves them beyond human comprehension? Do I maintain an us/them mentality to the world? Or do I realize that according to Ephesians 2:1-5 that I am the same as them apart from Christ?

When I choose to see the image of God in every person, I am better enabled to love them like Christ loves them. And my ability to share the Gospel, and effectiveness in doing so increases. We often say that we want to see people the God sees them… so why don’t we?

 

John

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