Daily Devotion #2

To Believe or Not to Believe?

'Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies,' John 11:25

I think I was hurt the most recently to hear (or read rather) that one of my best friend's brothers decided to no longer believe in God.  I was so hurt that I asked to talk to him.  That ended up in me being very angry because he accused me of only believing in God because I did not want to go to Hell.  I was infuriated!!!  How dare he simplify my suffering to merely not living in Hell?  Then the next day, I saw an article about a black man being an atheist.  His belief, of what I could skim, involved him being responsible to himself for his actions.  After that, I decided to write, but only after I had time to gather my thoughts on this topic.

To Believe or Not to Believe?  I asked myself this question.  Could I live my life not believing in God?  I immediately realized I could not, because I have experienced and witnessed too many miracles amidst great suffering in my only 26 years on Earth.  I cannot and will not ever doubt that God exists, because I have felt and seen His hand move in my life in many different ways.  I think I have experienced about every emotion known to man, and from every one that was bad, God has pulled me back from.  From losses to gains, God has been present in them all.  I can recount every situation in my life and in the lives of my family that show that God is real, and He exists, but most people that don't believe would try to reason them away with some scientific or philosophical jargon.  The truth is, I believe because I have a real-lationship with God.  I know that He is real because I have experienced enough situations that had God not been there, I would have been dead and gone.  It is so crazy how the near-death experience, or in my case, almost near-death, will cause the blinders to come flying off, and it is there that you see God's glory.  I won't, however, act holier-than-thou and say that I have not doubted that God heard me, because He has shown me in the lives of those close to me and in complete strangers that He is real.  It is only in growth that I realized that God did answer and maybe my ears were too clogged to hear Him.

I am a firm believer in accountability.  If only everyone would hold themselves accountable to how they played a role in the lives of those around them, I think people would see life differently.  Prime example, if a boy is told by his mother he will never amount to anything--and he actually never amounts to anything, is it his fault wholly?  No!  We must hold the mother, and undoubtedly his environment accountable for his failure in life.  Of course at some point he could have chosen to try the opposite, but can you really expect him to do opposite of what he has known his whole life?  However, had he known his worth as a child of God, maybe his life would have turned out differently.  Yet still, people tend to do what they see, and as a child, you feed off of the words of your parents. 

I don't know what experience my friend's brother had in a church, let alone much of his life. Maybe it was the strong hand of judgmentalism and Biblically unsound traditions like I experienced in various aspects of my traditional Baptist upbringing that would cause any free-spirited person to turn away from God.  Maybe in an extreme case he was abused by someone in the church in a position of power to make him doubt God.  Or maybe it is all the evil in the world, like he stated, that he 'doesn't see God doing anything about', or maybe it is like my opinion, he just hasn't held himself accountable for his role in the state of his life.  When we get tired of blaming God, He often hands us the mirror so that we can truly see ourselves, and how when we tried to run our lives, we miserably missed the mark.  He then shows us how much easier life is with Him, than it is to spend eternity without Him.

In having a better relationship with God now, I understand the purpose of my suffering.  I don't like it, I don't like it, I don't like it (did I say it enough?) but I know it is only in the midst of difficulties that these impurities of my character are extracted and God continues to mold me more into the likeness of Christ.  I believe God exists because in His awesomeness, He finds ways to show us how much He loves us everyday.  I know there is much evil and poverty and unfairness in the world.  I don't try to reason them away that because a person sinned, they are doomed to their state forever.  I do know that just as God is real, so is the devil.  I know that anyone willing to be used by the devil, both rich and poor, young and old, black, white, yellow or blue, will be used to bring his ultimate desire of dooming humanity to eternal suffering.  But at the end of the day...believing all comes back to accountability.  At the end, we all have to go before God.  We can choose to live our lives how we want, 'responsible to ourselves' and blaming the world for everything wrong.  Or we can believe in God, His word, His Son, and let Him lead us to make a difference and change it all.

"Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son."  John 3:18 NIV

Daily Devotion

Dispel the Curse

 

"And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed."  Genesis 12:3 NASB

Good evening everyone!! I know, I know, its been way too long since my last post.  But I've been on a soul searching and spiritual journey as of late, abandoning all and everything just to get my life in proper perspective.  I had a fabulous time in Jamaica with one of my best friends for her birthday (and well, one of my delayed gifts to myself).  It was so appropriate for me to go then; God blessed me to realize just how much He favors me.  And to be honest, He favors us all the same way.  As long as we commit our lives to doing His will by accepting His Son, we can rest assured that God's hand of blessing will be upon us.

So irony struck me today because God orchestrated it that all of my devotions that I read at the start of the day were all discussing blessings and curses.  It lead me to share my take on it; for a long time I would complain and have a 'woe is me' attitude towards my life.  We all received the ultimate blessing of eternity with God by accepting Christ as the supreme sacrifice, the great atonement for our sins.  We are to repent--that is, forgive and be forgiven, and then turn away from our former behaviors towards God.  Once we repent and sin no more, we are reconciled to God.  From the time we accept Christ as our personal Lord and Savior, we share in the blessings--and the inheritance.  Because of my journey lately, I know realize how blessed I really am.  But that prevalence of 'blessings and generational curses' discussions forced me to really look at why things happen, and seem to keep happening to people.

My fascination rose when I came to read about curses.  I'm not versed in the occult, but I do know that it exists, simply because the enemy satan exists.  His desire to pervert everything that is God--the purity, the love, the family, the marriage, everything, so why would he not provide for a way to pervert God's way of showing He loved us by creating a way to show how much he hates us?  So I came to understand that curses can only come upon us when we step outside of God's will for our lives.  Looking at Numbers 22-23 in my bible study showed me that nothing God has blessed can be cursed.  Nothing (See Numbers 22:12 and actually read both stories...this shows you where God will use anything and anyone to speak to you!) can remove the blessing on you but you and your own sinfulness.  The Israelites were blessed and it was their own sin that caused them to become cursed in latter centuries.  These curses fell upon them because they opened the door and let satan take up residence among them--in fact many of them were sleeping with the enemy (God forbade the Israelites to marry outside of their race, but many disobeyed and it is even evident in some of the most famous kings, i.e. Solomon, who left their love of God for the love of these foreign women, and eventually their idols.) 

When we fall outside of God's will, there are all sorts of evils awaiting us.  Because our flesh is sinful in nature, it is easy to get caught up and drift away in sin.  It is only then that the enemy can get us. In the case of the Israelites, they kept on sinning, generation after generation, each worse than the one before.  It was not until Christ came and died, that through Him we are able to again direct communion with God.  I started working on this devotion nearly 3 weeks ago (Aug 17) and it was only a few days ago this week that I found the scripture I was looking for. In Exodus 34:6-7, "Then the LORD passed by in front of him and proclaimed, "The LORD, the LORD God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation."  So I remembered that without Christ, without accepting His seed of eternal life and rebirth as a child of God, we are doomed to these 'curses'.  By turning back to that life without God, outside of His will, I overlook the best blessing He gave, Christ.

 

So I believe that when we accept Christ, we are freed from the curse--in fact Galatians 3:13 says so!  We are no longer bound by generational curses and self-inflicted ones because the blood of Jesus was the ultimate atonement.  Believe in Him and be free!  He redeems and saves us from our greatest enemy, satan and our own selves.

 

"He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."  2 Cor 5:21 NASB