What Kind Of World (part 1)

Many still ask the question: “If there is a God, why is there so much pain and suffering in our world?”

To those who still are asking this question, I respond with a question of my own—What kind of world do you want to live in?

• God could have made a world without any pain and suffering, but there would have been no love.
• He could have made a world with no good and no evil, but there would have been no love.
• He could have made a world where His creation was programmed for only good, but there would have been no love.
• He could have chosen to make nothing at all, but there would have been no creation to love and no creation to love Him.

Without pain and suffering, there can be no love!

“For it is commendable if someone bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because they are conscious of God.” 1 Peter 2:19

“Commendable” means—To be found acceptable or to find God’s favor. Literally, this verse would read “One finds His grace when … ” as servants/slaves to a good master, we find our duty (our service) to Him easy and pleasurable: “For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Math. 11:30). It is this conscience towards God, that takes us beyond just doing our duty and service to God as a servant/slave.

We live in in a religious culture that places a very high priority on the ephemeral, the temporary graces of God. All too often in today’s church, these lesser things are made to be of far greater importance than the eternal gifts of God’s grace, Heaven’s spiritual riches. This worldly view has come to define what we call having faith and hope.

Where our gospel today greatly errs is in preaching/teaching a gospel that leads the chosen to an earnest expectation of earthly blessings and earthly gain instead of the future glories we shall see. The whole of the Gospel hinges on the faith we have been given by God to believe in Christ and given the hope in His coming.

Take that away and we have no gospel at all!

We then are left with a faith that is not real. We are then left with a hope that is not hope at all. What good is it to hope for only that which we can see. The result is what we see in our world today. Many have a faith and hope that does not lead to true repentance, to forgiveness and to salvation!

Our cultural gospel is sinfully defective in how it deals with the question of pain and suffering.

Many a false gospel has been built on the defective foundation of believing the purpose of God is to give us what we want and make us feel good in the receiving of it now. Many a false gospel is built on the notion that one is blessed of God when God blesses us with His temporal lesser graces.

What kind of world do you want to live in?

The Greatest Of These Is Love

Faith is no more when we can see Him with our own sight.
Hope fades away when what is hoped for is right before our eyes.
Without the the pain and the suffering,
There would be no need in a salvation for the offering.
As we groan to be released from it;
His love must stand supreme.
Love is found in the longing God gives us to be eternally free.

Faith and hope could not be sustained without His eternal love.
Love descended with mercy and truth from above.
We regard way too highly all these things said to pass away.
Faith … Hope … And Love—These three things He said would remain,
Only one of these is the greatest.
Love must be the reason.
For, all other gifts He gives will last for only a season.

Without God’s love in the gifting,
All other gifts added together amount to absolutely nothing.
Earthly faith breeds earthly hope; which then breeds earthly fear.
Through the pain and suffering of life, our faith and hope draws Him near.
Our hope in the final end must be the outcome of faith.
In His offering of eternity.
In the ephemeral is never found the faith and hope to truly believe

Love springs eternal, for … The Greatest Of These Is Love!

Ron C. Kyker