QUESTIONS AND RAINBOWS!

 

This blog is dedicated to the two Emmas in my life.  Emma Jane Curry and Emma Blencowe – my prayer for the two of you is, that no matter what life throws at you, you will continue to grow in the knowledge that God wants beautiful things for you.

 

“It was a cold, stormy day.  The children and I were driving to the dentist.  We witnessed the clouds clear and the most magnificent rainbow appeared.  Our four-year-old daughter had been given a book about Noah and we read it daily.  Thinking this was a wonderful opportunity to illustrate the story of Noah, I asked her why God sent the rainbow.  After a moment of silence, she said, “Cause God wants us to have beautiful things to look at!”

Even though it was not quite the answer I was looking for, it is wonderful to know she is growing up in the knowledge God wants beautiful things for her.”¹

 

 

This same daughter, Emma Jane, is now eleven years old and has been asking the following question repeatedly for the past few months “If God knows everything that is going to happen in the future WHY did He create the world and make us, knowing that we would sin and destroy the world He gave us?”

Up until yesterday I have not been able to give her an answer with any real conviction because, truth be told, it is a question I have struggled with most of my life!  I have always told her that God made the human race because He wants to have a relationship with us but that does not answer the question of ‘why would He do that?  Why would He give us freedom of choice when He knew that we would turn our backs on Him and destroy the world?’

We were driving along the coast and had just been admiring a beautiful rainbow when Emma Jane said, with awe in her voice, “Wow, mom, isn’t God wonderful!” and then it struck me – that is the reason why we were born – God made us so that we could experience joy and wonder and reverence for Him and His creation.  If we didn’t have freedom of choice we would not be able to experience any emotions – we would be robotic creatures unable to form a relationship with God and to interact with Him.

God knew we would destroy the earth but He would still have created it even if only a small percentage of the human race over all the ages chose to follow Him.  He confirmed this when He sent Jesus to die on the cross “for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

He knew long before He created the world that we would sin but His desire to have fellowship with us, His longing for us to experience the beauty that He could provide us with and the fact that He wants us to spend eternity with Him in heaven was worth it.

“The entire human race was created to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever.   Sin has diverted the human race onto another course, but it has not altered God’s purpose to the slightest degree. And when we are born again we are brought into the realization of God’s great purpose for the human race,  namely, that He created us for Himself.  This realization of our election by God is the most joyful on earth, and we must learn to rely on this tremendous creative purpose of God”.²  

We are made in God's image "and therefore share many of His characteristics and emotions.  Knowing this provides the basis for self-worth.  Self-worth is not defined by possessions, achievements, physical attractiveness, or public acclaim.  Self-worth is knowing that God created us in His likeness.  Criticizing or downgrading ourselves is criticizing what God has made.  Because we are like God we can feel positive about ourselves and our abilities.  Knowing that you are a person of infinite worth gives you the freedom to love God, know Him personally, and make a valuable contribution to those around you".³

 

1.  Extract from God's Promise for Families, Noelene Curry

2.  My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers

3.  Life Application Bible, Study notes

 

 

 

POVERTY & LOVE

A couple of months ago I attended a service in a really quaint church in a small town known as Bathurst in the Eastern Cape.  The minister entered the church wearing black flowing robes and he had a snow white beard.  He took his place behind the lectern and his opening words were “I better introduce myself.  I am Father Abraham and if you are here for the Christmas day service you can meet Father Christmas!”

The minister was my dad Ray Lutge, who in fact had been ministering in the Bathurst church for many years, but had been on a month’s bush camping holiday with my brother in Namibia and had decided not to shave!

His sermon that morning was on the gifts of the Spirit and I was amazed to find out that there are in fact 27 Spiritual gifts noted in the Bible.

They are prophecy, service, teaching, exhortation, giving, leadership, mercy, wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, discerning of spirits, tongues, interpretation, apostleship, helps, administration, evangelist, pastoral, celibacy, voluntary poverty, martyrdom, hospitality, missionary, intercession and exorcism.

I have to laugh sometimes at how practical our God can be.  Here we have all these lovely ‘spiritual’ gifts and in there somewhere is this amazingly practical gift of administration!

Romans 12 says “Just as there are many parts to our bodies, so it is with Christ’s body.  We are all parts of it, and it takes every one of us to make it complete, for we each have different work to do. So we belong to each other, and each needs all the others.  God has given each of us the ability to do certain things well”¹.

If you look at the list of gifts there are some there that each one of us should be practicing.

The gift of giving, the gift of mercy, the gift of helps and the gift of hospitality are all gifts that we are capable of exercising.

The gift I found very interesting was voluntary poverty.  “It is the special ability that God gives to certain members of the Body of Christ to renounce material comfort and luxury and adopt a personal life-style equivalent to those living at the poverty level in a given society in order to serve God more effectively”. 
Well, Mother Teresa was certainly given that gift in abundance. She founded the Missionaries of Charity ministry in Calcutta and for 50 years she lived and worked amongst the poorest of the poor. She cared for orphans, AIDS patients, lepers, tuberculosis victims and many more in need.

God was speaking about material poverty and yet how many of us live in absolute poverty spiritually and emotionally. This kind of poverty is something that we have control of and it is in our power to change.

Even though, on a daily basis, Mother Teresa saw people starving with hunger she could still say the following:

“We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless.  The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty.  We must start in our homes to remedy this kind of poverty.  Being unwanted, unloved, uncared for, forgotten by everybody, I think that is a much greater hunger, a much greater poverty than the person who has nothing to eat”

Each one of us is capable of doing something about this kind of poverty – all it takes is love.

 

 

 

1  Life Application Bible