From stress to rest Part II

  

Remember the faithfulness of God

Published: Sunday | March 12, 2023 | 12:15 AM

Stress, anxiety, and worry accomplish and solve nothing. The Bible tells us, “An anxious heart weighs a man down...” (Proverbs 12:25, NIV). It’s like pushing the gas pedal on a car while it remains in park. It revs up the engine and makes a lot of noise but goes nowhere. Ongoing unhealthy stress produces negative effects in our lives such as:

• Physical issues like headaches, muscle tension and aches, restlessness, high blood pressure, upset stomach and nausea, tiredness, fatigue, and sleep disorders. Stress leading to anxiety has been linked to six of the leading causes of death.

• Physical health problems like heart disease, cancer, lung ailments, accidents, and cirrhosis of the liver.

• Emotional issues such as fear, anger, being constantly irritated, sadness, depression, and a general feeling of being overwhelmed resulting in panic attacks and sometimes prompting suicide.

Some of us need to take this stress thing in hand. The good news is that Jesus wants to restore our lives. He said: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” Matthew 11:28 (NIV). God gives us rest from our stress as a gift.

There’s a distinct difference between what Jesus offers us and what the current modern thinking offers us. In this era much of what is offered for stress enables us to cope a little better with it. Exercise for example, will help us cope, and while we should exercise, it doesn’t offer a cure for the stress. Proper diet will also make life better but it’s not a cure. It’s like constantly taking medication but never being cured. Jesus said, “I will give you rest”; in Christ there is a place that we can find peace even when things are not going right. Jesus said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives.” John 14:27 (NIV). He can give us a peace that the world cannot manufacture.

When feelings of overwhelm and stress come, regardless of the source, the first thing we need to do is to remember the faithfulness of God. We often underestimate the power of doing this. God has been faithful in unprecedented ways to all of us at one time or the other. There were situations in our past that were impossible and should have ended our lives, our futures, or our careers, but God stepped in. We’re so practiced at allowing our present circumstances to cast shade on the goodness of God in the past, that we need to deliberately remind ourselves. We are too practiced at forgetting, too practiced at looking at the glass as half empty instead of half full, and too practiced at forgetting the miracles God has done in our lives. Choose to remember the faithfulness of God.

King David, when under stress said: “Why am I discouraged? Why is my heart so sad? I will put my hope in God! I will praise Him again — my Saviour and my God! … each day the LORD pours His unfailing love upon me…” Psalm 42:5 and 8a (NLT). David practised recounting God’s faithfulness. If He did it before, He will do it again. Praise and thanksgiving are keys to breakthrough. God is enthroned on the praises of His people. When we start to praise, it invites His presence into our situation and brings us peace.

Recognise that the God who saved you before will save you again. The Lord is enthroned in our praises and the answer to the thing causing us stress is in Him.

LINK:  https://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/news/20230312/remember-faithfulness-god

HEALING GOD

Bible & Theology

Why Does God Restore Job?

March 13, 2023  |  Russell L. Meek

 

Editors’ note: 

Take part in TGC’s Read the Bible initiative, where we’re encouraging Christians and churches to read together through God’s Word in a year.

As a young boy, I watched my grandmother die from cancer. I remember vividly her hair slowly falling out from chemo, her body emaciated as it succumbed to the disease, and the nurse comforting me as I crumpled into a ball outside the door where she took her last breath. I remember even more vividly her singing “Amazing Grace” and speaking about God’s faithfulness during the whole ordeal.

It took decades to understand what my grandmother was teaching me those last few months of her life: humans are humans and God is God. Our place is to trust him, not to try to be him.

The book of Job teaches us the same lesson. Why does God restore Job? I won’t bury the answer: God is God and he does what he wants. He wants to restore Job. This is what the entire book drives at. Job’s restoration rests completely on God’s sovereignty and nothing Job (or anyone else) does.

When we reach the book’s final eight verses—after more than 41 chapters of dense poetry—we’re at risk of missing this point. At first read, we may think the book of Job is about suffering. This theme does play a significant role in Job’s narrative, but ultimately Job’s suffering and the long diatribes about what causes suffering, who should experience it, and how to avoid it are just vehicles to deliver the book’s larger theological message.

The real issue Job, his friends, and we today must face is that humans cannot control—or even influence—God.

Job Doesn’t Deserve Suffering

We know Job is a sinner (Rom. 3:23), but the book’s prologue sets readers up to be shocked at what unfolds, for it introduces Job as “a man of complete integrity, who feared God and turned away from evil” (1:1, CSB). Verse 3 recounts Job’s enormous wealth and seems to imply it results from Job’s uprightness—an interpretation consistent with the blessings for obedience described in God’s covenant with Israel (Deut. 28:1–14).

The real issue Job, his friends, and we today must face is that humans cannot control—or even influence—God.

Job isn’t privy to God’s assessment of his character or the conversation between Yahweh and the adversary in chapter 1. But his primary complaint throughout the book is that he doesn’t deserve to suffer as he is because he’s committed no sin to provoke such an exacting punishment. Job’s friends, on the other hand, argue his suffering is proof he’s being punished for some sin. Readers know Job is right, but as he, his friends, and we will discover, that isn’t the point. The point is both Job and his friends are operating with a wrong view of God.

There’s a faulty presupposition underlying both Job’s insistence he doesn’t deserve to suffer and his friends’ insistence he obviously does: that humans can control through our actions whether God blesses or curses us. It’s true, as Deuteronomy 28 and even New Testament passages like 1 Corinthians 11 make clear, that God does have categories of reward and discipline that are related to a person’s choices. But the parties in the book of Job assumed more than this.

They had a mechanistic view of the relationship between suffering and sin, blessing and obedience. They assumed blessing is always a reward for obedience and suffering is always a punishment for sin. Conversely they assumed that obedience always results in blessing while sin always results in suffering. Such a view reduces God to a cosmic candy machine that can be manipulated through the right sort of actions. This elevates humans and lowers God. That’s why Yahweh rebukes Job’s friends and why Job must repent.

Job Doesn’t Deserve Restoration

The book of Job ends where it began—recounting Job’s enormous wealth and many children, which are clear markers of blessing (Deut. 28:1–14). It’s as if the author flashes a smile and offers readers the posttest. Perhaps the audience can be forgiven for thinking Job deserved the blessings he received in chapter 1. But will the error persist? Have we gotten all this way and still don’t understand? Or, having read of Job’s ordeal and Yahweh’s incredible self-revelation, will we agree with Job that God is free to do whatever he deems good and right in his infinite wisdom and justice?

Having read of Job’s ordeal and Yahweh’s incredible self-revelation, will we agree God is free to do whatever he deems good and right?

Chapter 42 doesn’t explain God’s restoration of Job. Job certainly repents for talking out of turn: “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (42:5–6). And yet the book still holds Yahweh responsible for the evil done to Job: his friends “showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the LORD had brought upon him” (42:11, emphasis mine). We know from other Scriptures (e.g., Gen. 3; 1 John 1:5; James 1:13) that Yahweh doesn’t cause evil, but this passage and others (e.g., Amos 3:6) make it clear God is sovereign over evil and uses it for his purposes. It’s part of the mystery of God that humans can’t unravel.

Yahweh doesn’t explain his reasons for “all the evil” he brought upon Job. He offers no rationale for why he “blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning” (42:12). He just does it, and to interpret the book’s ending as dependent upon Job in any way runs against the grain of the preceding narrative, especially against how Job interprets his encounter with Yahweh.

When we finish reading Job, we still have questions about suffering and God’s purposes in the world, but it’s at least clear an experience of blessing or cursing isn’t an appropriate way to measure a person’s righteousness. God is free to bless or curse as he sees fit.

Russell L. Meek teaches Old Testament and Hebrew at Moody Theological Seminary and William Tennent School of Theology. His most recent books include Ecclesiastes and the Search for Meaning in an Upside-Down World and the coauthored Book-by-Book Guide to Biblical Hebrew Vocabulary. He writes a regular column on understanding and applying the Old Testament at Fathom Magazine.

 LINK:https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/god-restore-job/

 

 

 

GOD FORBID??? OR THE FALL???

Opinion / Letters

LETTER: In the name of God, go

Cabinet reshuffle puts more people on gravy grain

08 March 2023 - 16:18 

 

President Cyril Ramaphosa. Picture: DWAYNE SENIOR/BLOOMBERG

The cabinet reshuffle by our president shows how out of touch he, the ANC leadership and alliance partners are (“Reshuffle fails to cultivate market confidence”, March 8).

One of the traits of a failing government is not only tone deafness to the plight of the voters but an insistence that it can double down on its failed policy of buying itself out of trouble by paying off key constituents. The ANC believes enough people will be persuaded by those that have their palms greased by inclusion in the cabinet to buy the “life will be better next year” line.

Ramaphosa will soon discover that it is not the size of the cabinet that will turn things around, but rather the ability of those in key ministries to act to fundamentally change the direction of the country. Keeping the same jockeys on dead horses is not smart politics  — as Boris Johnson found.

The likes of Gwede Mantashe, Pravin Gordhan and Bheki Cele have long since ceased to inspire anyone, especially the majority who are experiencing a serious deterioration in their livelihoods. Setting expectations is easy; meeting them always far more difficult. After 30 years of promising everything and delivering little, you would think the ANC would realise this. 

The currency market’s response to the cabinet reshuffle clearly indicates a lack of trust. Oliver Cromwell said it best when dismissing the rump parliament for their disastrous attempts to turn around the misfortunes of the state, “You have sat too long for any good you have been doing. In the name of God, go.”

John Catsicas
Via email

JOIN THE DISCUSSION: Send us an email with your comments to letters@businesslive.co.za. Letters of more than 300 words will be edited for length. Anonymous correspondence will not be published. Writers should include a daytime telephone number.​

LINK:  https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/letters/2023-03-08-letter-in-the-name-of-god-go/

BUSINESS DAY

TGIF

Thank God it’s Friday

By Njamba Kapalu,

• 10th March 2023

• Lifestyle

Very few people are able to remember what they learned or did in primary school. We tend to remember only moments that had an emotional impact on our lives. One such moment for me was a school play. I cannot recall anything else of substance about this play except what was the summary or the conclusion of the matter.

A young boy in grade two was given the opportunity to end the play with the moral of the story. With this being his only line, he came to the front with great enthusiasm and shouted, “If you do not eat, you do not work.” You may have figured out that this was not correct, so did the audience. They all burst out laughing. I imagine the parents thought how ridiculous it would be if that is how the world worked. What he should have said, which should be our belief, was “if you do not work, you do not eat.” This is the principle that we, the children, were meant to take away from this.

Unfortunately, this is not our culture today. Leisure is such an important part of our life that work is seen as a secondary reason for living – something done once the eating or leisure has been concluded. “Thank God it’s Friday” or TGIF is how we hail the weekend, our opportunity to do what we assume life is meant for. Once the work is done, at 5pm we do not then strive to keep our minds engaged until the dreaded Monday morning has arrived.

Generation Z, those born after 1995, have generally grown up in a comfortable Zambia. The drive and passion that drove their parents who knew that without hard work they would be resigned to a village, dependent on the rich relative who made it out, pushed them to do great things. Many had no inheritance to speak of, were the first in their family to get to university and were one failed exam away from abject poverty. They knew that without hard work, they would not eat. Not so with the youth.

Unless we stop seeking pleasure as the goal and not as a secondary reward, we cannot expect to develop. It is true that easy times make weak men. Many of us are still young enough to get past this and work. However, a continued pursuit of leisure will only continue the creation of weak men, weak leaders, weak fathers, and in the larger scheme of things, a weak country.

There is room for rest and leisure. If you truly give of yourself to labour and the pursuit of generational wealth, your body will tell you to reset. Burnout is not the goal. Work hard enough that the next generation of Zambians will stop to look to the government as the source of all help. Work hard enough that your children will desire to imitate you. In this way, God will be gracious to bless the works of our hands that we may then eat. That we may thank Him for designating a day of rest.

LINK:  https://diggers.news/lifestyle/2023/03/10/thank-god-its-friday/

GOD @ ALL TIMES!

 

God in the Mess

By Nathan GroenewoldMarch 8, 2023

Listen To Article

I worry that our discipleship groups, catechism classes, and sermons teach us how to defend a God who needs no defense.

Our faith prioritizes being correct, not meeting the God who invites us on a journey, on a path alongside others who are nothing like us. We become people with answers instead of people with the Spirit, people who end conversations instead of start them.  

The cohort of young adults I lead traveled to Washington, D.C., last week for our first big learning intensive: a 10-hour road trip in a 12-passenger van, a full-day visit to the Museum of African American History and Culture, a 3-hour conversation with Navajo author and leader Mark Charles, a panel with D.C. leaders, and a celebration of HBCUs at a Black Baptist church founded in 1802. All in three days. 

We’re a diverse group from varied spaces: Black, brown, and white, richer and poorer, Baptist, Methodist, and Reformed. Last night over my mediocre cornbread and better-than-average venison chili, we debriefed the trip with a simple question: “How did you experience God last week?” 

As I listened to our cohort share, I noticed that we had all found God most fully in the trip’s messiness and tension, in raw and honest wrestling, not in neat and tidy doctrines. It was encountering ideas, opinions, and views that challenged, pushed, and prodded us to look at scripture through fresh eyes, to rehash our theologies as they intersected most directly to real suffering and real hope. 

Mark Charles

The most impactful experience of God for the majority of our Cohort was our conversation with Mark Charles. Mark spent two hours openly sharing his own wrestling with a God who didn’t seem present on the Navajo reservation, a Jesus who didn’t seem to like Gentiles (calling the Canaanite woman a dog), and more presently: our nation’s push for the sort of reparations that seem more like a thinly veiled attempt to redistribute stolen land from one unrightful owner to another. This was hard stuff that did not lend itself to tidy answers. 

I think we resonated with Mark Charles because we felt a sense of deep belonging in his theological honesty. We didn’t need to meet his wrestling with fear, anxiety, or an immediate rebuttal. Instead, we met God. 

The enthusiasm these hard conversations generated for our cohort made me think of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who wrote, “But we note that some of the best theologies have come not from the undisturbed peace of a don’s study, or his speculations in a university seminar, but from a situation where they have been hammered out on the anvil of adversity, in the heat of the battle, or soon thereafter.” And Allan Boesak, South African anti-apartheid leader, who echoes Barthian language when he wrote, “It is in the concrete experience of actual human experience that the word of God shows itself alive and more powerful.”

These D.C. wrestlings so genuinely brought our cohort into a deeper love of God and love for scripture. It makes me wonder if we often approach discipleship from the wrong direction. We start with clarity — with clear and simple answers — and then move into messiness if we have the time. But perhaps, we encounter God most fully when we begin in the middle of the mess.

Nathan Groenewold

Nathan Groenewold is an ordained minister in the Christian Reformed Church and founding director of Cohort Detroit, a ministry which aims to raise up a new generation of young leaders who love God deeply, work for justice, and humbly serve marginalized Detroit communities. He fills the cracks in his summers with disc golf and gardening. 

LINK:  https://blog.reformedjournal.com/2023/03/08/god-in-the-mess/

 

WILL OF GOD

Author Charlene Murray’s New Book, "God Is Willing," Explores How God's Followers Hold the Ability to Reject Satan's Works & Follow the Path to Accepting the Lord's Love

Recent release “God Is Willing,” from Covenant Books author Charlene Murray, is an enthralling look at how readers can work to reject harmful thoughts that are the works of Satan's temptation to allow heavenly and divine acts into one's lives. Through Murray's writings, readers will be able to further open their souls to God's will, allowing his blessings and messages to fill their lives.

 

Philadelphia, PA, March 09, 2023 --(PR.com)-- Charlene Murray, who was guided by the Lord through the Bible to gain insight into his Holy Kingdom, has completed her new book, “God Is Willing”: a faith-based read designed to help one discern the differences between the miracles of the Lord and the dangerous temptations of Satan’s forces.

“‘God Is Willing’ is an inspired book that reveals the loving kindness of our Creator,” writes Murray. “This book helps you become aware of what the spiritual realm is doing for you, and what it is doing to cause calamities in your life. Showing you how to discern the difference between the thoughts that God’s kingdom gives and the thoughts that Satan’s kingdom gives. Becoming aware of this will help you in your life. Being that we cannot see angels, we need to know the difference between the two types. God has made sure that honorable angels’ actions/ways be different from the demons, so that we the people can know them by the thoughts that we are given. It is our thoughts that propel us to do good or bad.

“There are many treasures that our Creator has left in the land for us, the people, to find, and having this discernment is one of them. This discernment allows you to not automatically accept the thoughts that you have. Once you start learning to reject thoughts that are harmful to you, the honorable angel’s thoughts will have a greater hold on you so that you can be released from the harmful thoughts. Honorable angels give us thoughts with feelings attached to them so that we can maintain our goodness.

“As you read this book, you will see how your thoughts can manipulate you to do things that are non-beneficial; however, utilizing your discernment will counteract these non-beneficial thoughts. Whether a person does God’s will or not, they can still have salvation through thy Lord, Jesus.”

Published by Covenant Books of Murrells Inlet, South Carolina, Charlene Murray’s new book is the perfect tool for those seeking to attain a higher knowledge of God’s plan for them and learn to open their hearts and minds to his divine guidance.

Readers can purchase “God Is Willing” at bookstores everywhere, or online at the Apple iTunes store, Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

Covenant Books is an international Christian owned and operated publishing house based in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina. Covenant Books specializes in all genres of work which appeal to the Christian market. For additional information or media inquiries, contact Covenant Books at 843-507-8373.

Contact

Covenant Books
Media Department
800-452-3515
www.covenantbooks.com

Contact

 

LINK:  https://www.pr.com/press-release/880885

 

 

GODLY MIRACLE

'God gave me another chance:' Crookston mom nearly killed by son credits faith for surviving

Angie Gonzalez, 52, has been released from the hospital just days after she was stabbed nearly a dozen times.

52-year-old Angie Gonzalez.

Contributed

By Matt Henson

 

March 08, 2023 11:34 PM

News reporting

CROOKSTON, Minn. — It's nothing short of a miracle.

A Crookston mom nearly killed on a city sidewalk during a viscous knife attack was released from the hospital Wednesday, March 8.

Her son, 36-year-old Kevin Corona, is facing attempted murder charges.

Five days after 52-year-old Angie Gonzalez was stabbed nearly a dozen times with a knife that had a 10-inch blade, she is up and walking and eating solid foods.

"God gave me another chance to live," she said.

A lot of optimism from the mother of five and grandmother of 17.

"I kept praying, asking God to please be with me," referring to her ride to the hospital.

Last Friday, March 3, police say Gonzalez was attacked by Corona on the sidewalk in front of their Crookston home after he allegedly got upset she was moving to a different home.

Officer Heath Hanson was the first officer to arrive, and applied pressure to the nearly dozen stab wounds to prevent her from bleeding to death.

"I kept telling him, 'I didn't want to die, I didn't want to die,' and he kept telling me, 'I promise you you are not going to die,'" said Gonzalez.

Joel Schwartz was the one who called 911 that day. He was in the backyard with his four kids and heard the screams for help.

"I truly believe it was God that put him there at the right time," Gonzalez said.

Not only is he a new neighbor, but he's the new pastor at the new Freedom Church which held its first service the previous Sunday.

Gonzalez introduced herself after the service.

"To see that she showed up that first Sunday, that was God's timing," Schwartz said.

Schwartz obviously made a big impression on Gonzalez. It was him who the family called to come pray at her bedside.

"It was special to see. I wasn't expecting to see her just as full of joy, full of hope and faith as she was," Schwartz said.

They did not just talk about her physical wounds.

"I think apart from forgiveness you can't look forward with such hope, and apart from Jesus how do you forgive something like that," Schwartz said.

While Gonzalez is praising God for the miracle of healing, she wants to thank the doctors, nurses, police officers and the community as well.

"Thank everybody for all of the love and support, calls, texts, prayers, so overwhelming, so grateful," she said.

If all goes well, Gonzalez could return home by the end of the week.

A GoFundMe site has been setup to help Gonzalez.

A town-wide enchilada feed will be held Friday, March 17 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. in Crookston.

Share

News reporting

By Matt Henson

Matt Henson is an Emmy award-winning reporter/photographer/editor for WDAY. Prior to joining WDAY in 2019, Matt was the main anchor at WDAZ in Grand Forks for four years. He was born and raised in the suburbs of Philadelphia and attended college at Lyndon State College in northern Vermont, where he was recognized twice nationally, including first place, by the National Academy for Arts and Science for television production. Matt enjoys being a voice for the little guy. He focuses on crimes and courts and investigative stories. Just as often, he shares tear-jerking stories and stories of accomplishment. Matt enjoys traveling to small towns across North Dakota and Minnesota to share their stories. He can be reached at mhenson@wday.com and at 610-639-9215. When he's not at work (rare) Matt resides in Moorhead and enjoys spending time with his daughter, golfing and attending Bison and Sioux games. 

 

LINK:  https://www.inforum.com/news/minnesota/god-gave-me-another-chance-crookston-mom-nearly-killed-by-son-credits-faith-for-surviving