Imagine yourself as a living house. – C.S.Lewis

Hurt, abandonment, doubt!

These are vehicles that drive us to disillusionment and anger toward God aren’t they? They can consume our soul and devastate our lives.

Some of us have grown up in less than wonderful home environments.

Why?

Some of us get diseases that cannot be healed and can be life threatening.

 Why?

Some of us have huge disappointments in personal relationships where we are abused and abandoned.

Why?

How come God allows these to happen?

We know God is supposed to be loving, but this just doesn’t feel that way.

The impacts to our life is not justice, from our perspective.

We hurt and it can feel as if God is the monster causing all this.

Even if we discern it is Satan’s pain inflicted on us, we still want to know why God doesn’t step in and do something. Maybe he just isn’t there...is a question that starts to cross our mind. Right?

I think these are many of the reasons people turn from God or reject coming near him.

Yet God writes a whole book in the bible about these types of calamities and how they are not the persons fault at all. (see Job) Some things are a result of universal eternal forces which catch us into major events of which we as mortals are not even aware. Others are to change us and prepare us for life works that can be significant in the eternal measures.

If everyone had the same idyllic circumstances, the forces for change, the innovation, the ability to react to incoming dangers would be so limited that we as a human race would probably have ceased to exist years ago. It is the hard things that build us, our world, and eternity.

The hard things must be there!

But why must they be in my life?

So that we can gain!

I really like C.S.Lewis’ comments on this from “Mere Christianity”

“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.”

God is in the restoration business. Eternal restoration! He fixes things for eternity, not for the few hours of life only. It is better to be a palace for ever than a broken up shack for ever.

Accepting Jesus as God and saviour may be a first step, but having God build the house for eternal glory is what continues from there. While we live he builds. Let thos eof us who he chose to call early in this life understand we are God’s special creatures. Life can hurt, but God will not let it be in vain. Every knock of shock is captured in waves of eternal power that actually grows and blesses us eternally.

"He that gives good advice, builds with one hand; he that gives good counsel and example, builds with both; but he that gives good admonition and bad example, builds with one hand and pulls down with the other." ~ Francis Bacon

A deliberate action to mislead or trick a person into a belief that is not true, can be the undoing of many a man or woman.

False truths cannot be backed up with hard evidence, yet so many of us fail to ask for the evidence itself. Instead, we accept the information without testing it. Allowing ourselves to be pulled or pushed in directions which are not optimal for our lives or growth as people of integrity and love.

Sometimes it is very intelligent people who are misled and one wonders how they could have allowed the untruths to seep into their minds, and then we need to remember that Satan has been on this earth since man walked the continents. As such he has seen all the ways of diverting our attention to things that we enjoy experiencing and don’t want to investigate further.

There are also many false philosophies and religious paths offered in the world of today. Yet this is not new either, or Paul in the first century would not have said...

So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, ⁷ rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.

⁸ See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the elemental spiritual forces of this world rather than on Christ. Colossians 2

There is a counter for false truths.

The indwelling Holy Spirit will make us uncomfortable as we experience them. If we have ensured that we have read God’s word and allowed it to settle into our soul, that feeling of discomfort will arise when falsehoods are encountered. This is the time to investigate, and not superficially. We have great tools at our disposal via internet resources now days. Let’s use them to check out the information.

Yet even here we need to be careful.

Double check and review the background resources to be sure of facts. I have even found that Wikipedia is often incorrect on small details. The internet as a whole has many falsehoods. Yet, we can gain from careful investigation and resources.

Let’s turn to God and pray for advice, it will come. Let’s beware of good sounding views and “fundamental” truths that have their source in human traditions and spirituality that rejects Jesus.  These are likely to pull us down if we fail and trust those that should be avoided.

On this site I always try to pack in as much truth as I can, but even I can make mistakes.

Always check everything that you can and as you find something useful and truthful, as God gives you that feeling that something is good, use it with care.

We only have one life, we need to make the most of it. Getting misled steals time from living fully!

Therefore let’s remember ... Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. ¹⁷ These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ. ¹⁸ Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you. Such a person also goes into great detail about what they have seen; they are puffed up with idle notions by their unspiritual mind. ¹⁹ They have lost connection with the head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.

²⁰ Since you died with Christ to the elemental spiritual forces of this world, why, as though you still belonged to the world, do you submit to its rules: ²¹ “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? ²² These rules, which have to do with things that are all destined to perish with use, are based on merely human commands and teachings. ²³ Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.

I think that advice of Paul given in the first century is still applicable. What do you think?

Have a wonderful blessed day of joyfully living each moment in truth!