by Jacob Ninan
Let us take a look at the nature of the God we worship. When the people whom He had created left Him and went after their own pleasures, He did not leave them. He made a way through the sacrificial death of His Son for everyone to get back to Him (1Tim.2:3-6). Even now, God is waiting patiently, delaying the return of Jesus so that more time may be given for people to repent (2Pet.3:9). His love for us is not because we are lovable, or worthy of His love. It is entirely due to His grace, the undeserving favour He is willing to show us, and so there is nothing on our side to boast about (Eph.2:8,9).
We should constantly work on getting rid of the idea from our mind that God saw some good in us. On the contrary, it was purely out of the goodness of His heart. None of us deserves any of His goodness. His grace makes it possible for the worst types of sinners to get converted, and then He washes us in the blood of Jesus Christ and makes us acceptable to Him (1Cor.6:9-11). No sin on our part has stopped Him from loving us. He looks at people who appear to be hopeless (Isa.1:5,6), and then calls them to Him so that He can wash them white like snow (vv.18,19). This is the God we worship.
Our problem is that we either imagine that God will accept us because we good, or that He cannot accept us because we are too bad. But the simple gospel is that the way God accepts us is not based on our being good. None of us is good enough for God, and on that count He can accept no one. But He is willing to accept us if only we would admit that we are sinners who cannot save ourselves, and go to Him and freely receive the salvation He has prepared for us through the death of Jesus on our behalf.
But we cannot receive this salvation if we will not admit that we do not deserve it, or if we will not believe that Jesus dying in our place is the only way we can be saved.
However, once God accepts us, He will not let go of us (Heb.13:5). Rom.8:31-35 tells us how God is for us, on our side. He has put away all accusations against us. He promises not to condemn us. Jesus is now interceding for us. God will not allow anyone or anything to separate us from His love for us.
But the huge risk we must reckon with is that we might move away from Him. That is why He warns us to be careful that we do not allow any unbelief to take hold of our heart (Heb.3:12). A heart that is believing can slowly become unbelieving. This unbelief can creep into our heart in many ways. A prayer that is not answered, or a calamity for which we might blame God can be enough to do it. But if we do that, we will not be fair towards God.
We must remember that while we are free to pray for anything from God, He is bound to grant us only those things that are according to His will (1Jn.5:14,15). If we know this, we can learn to pray and then submit to His will for the answers. Then we will not want to give up on God when we do not get the answers we expect.
It is common for us to imagine that even if God did not actually send us a calamity, He could have prevented it from reaching us. Many are troubled by Amos.3:6 that seems to say that God is directly responsible for every calamity that happens. What is referred to here is the discipline that God places on His people who would not listen to Him and would not respond even to His warnings through His prophets. But even such discipline is a mark of His love for us because He does not want us to perish even after we have sinned. There is no evil in Him, and all His plans for us are for our welfare (Jer.29:11). So, it is foolish to blame God when things go wrong. All problems have come from man's sins, and some of them are our own!
Another reason for moving away from God is that we are not willing to give up some particular sin. If we continue to sin, knowingly and deliberately, and there is no repentance or remorse, in effect we will be moving away from God (Heb.10:26,27).
Something that happens often is that people love someone or something more than God. We ought to take a serious warning from what happened to King Solomon after the humble and godly way in which he started. "Now King Solomon loved many foreign women ... from the nations concerning which Yahweh had said to the sons of Israel, 'You shall not go along with them, nor shall they go along with you, for they will surely turn your heart away after their gods.' Solomon clung to these in love. ... Now it happened at the time that Solomon was old, his wives turned his heart away after other gods; ... Solomon went after Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians and after Milcom the detestable idol of the Ammonites. ... Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the detestable idol of Moab, ... and for Molech the detestable idol of the sons of Ammon. Thus also he did for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods" (1Kgs.11:1-8). It was not that God was not good to Solomon, but that his love for women became stronger than his love for God. It can be money, pleasure, position, fame, honour or other things that can become more important to us than God. Satan is there to entice us by offering us the things we desire, if only we would bow a little to him (Matt.4:9).
Most believers go through situations where they feel that their troubles are too much for them to handle. If we then conclude that God did not keep His promises or that our expectations from Him have not been met, we are tempted to give up on God. But perhaps we wrongly expected that when anyone comes to Christ, he will not have any problems for him, or that all we have to do is to pray and then God will take every problem away. But many times, the answer God gives is that His grace is sufficient for us (2Cor.12:9). What this means is that with the help that God is willing to give us, we would be able to endure through the problem without being overcome by it. There are spiritual lessons for eternity which we can only learn through suffering. When we experience our own weaknesses in many ways, that gives us the opportunity to lean more on God and experience His power in us to transform us more into the character of Jesus. But many times, we do not think of eternal life when we are troubled by our life on earth.
It is a tough battle for us many times just to be able to endure without giving up. But those tough times are opportunities to exchange our earthly weaknesses for His eternal strength and character. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and unfading, having been kept in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. And though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, receiving as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls" (1Pet.1:2-9).