A Great God and Our Worst Moments

Recently, I had the opportunity to sit down with author and speaker Nancy Guthrie and discuss the subject matter of suffering. Nancy and her husband, David, lost two children to Zellweger Syndrome – a genetic disorder where the body does not produce peroxizones which aid in metabolism on the cellular level. Infants diagnosed with Zellweger usually live only six to eight months. Both Hope and Gabriel were born with the rare genetic disorder. The family’s journey through the experience is captured in Nancy’s book Holding On to Hope. God has used the Guthrie’s experience to minister to countless numbers of individuals and couples who’ve lost children. You can read more about their ministry here. I asked Nancy to help us understand what those suffering are going through and what we should expect to see as we minister to them. Her answer, which will be posted soon on the ReNew Conference website, echoed the perspective of the Psalmist in Psalm Seventy Three. Basically, our initial responses in the midst of pain are our worst. The Psalmist takes us through a play-by-play of his worst moments. It unfolds like a you’re not crazy session for the suffering.   Keep Reading...

If God Wills Disease Why Should We Try to Eradicate It?

I read this short article by Dr. John Piper today and thought it was well worth passing on:

 

This question arises from the biblical teaching that all things are ultimately under God’s control. “My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose” (Isaiah 46:10). “Whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps” (Psalm 135:6). “He does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, ‘What have you done?’” (Daniel 4:35). “[He] works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Ephesians 1:11).

This means that God governs all calamity and all disease. Satan is real and has a hand in it, but he is not ultimate and can do nothing but what God permits (Job 1:12-2:10). And God does not permit things willy-nilly. He permits things for a reason. There is infinite wisdom in all he does and all he permits. So what he permits is part of his plan just as much as what he does more directly. Keep Reading...

A Disease of Wind on the Brain

These are days of "modern thought;" as you are all aware men have become wondrously wise, and have outgrown the Scriptures. Certain unhappy children's heads are too big, and there is always a fear that it is not brain, but water on the brain; and this "modern thought" is simply a disease of wind on the brain, and likely to be a deadly one, if God does not cure the church of it.

Within the compass of the orthodox faith—within the range of the simple gospel—there is room enough for the development of every faculty, however largely gifted a man may be. No matter, though the man be a Milton in poetry, though he be a master in metaphysics, and a prince in science, if he be but pure in his poesy, accurate in his metaphysics, and honest in his science, he will find that the range of his thought needs no more space than Scripture gives him.

It has been thought by some that these persons who run off to heretical opinions are persons of great mind; believe me, brethren, it is a cheap way of making yourself to be thought so, but the men are nobodies. That is the sum of the matter.

We are satisfied with the theology of the Puritans; and we assert this day that, when we take down a volume of Puritanical theology we find in a solitary page more thinking and more learning, more Scripture, more real teaching, than in whole folios of the effusions of modern thought. Modern men would be rich if they possessed even the crumbs that fallen from the table of the Puritans. They have given us nothing new after all. A few variegated bladders they have blown, and they have burst while the blowers were admiring them; but, as for anything worth knowing, which has improved the heart, benefited the understanding, or fitted men for service in the battle of life, there have been no contributions made by this "modern thought" worth recording; whereas, the old thought of the Puritans and the Reformers, which I believe to be none other than the thought of God thought out again in man's brain and heart, is constantly giving consolation to the afflicted, furnishing strength to the weak, and guiding men's minds to behave themselves aright in the house of God and in the world at large.

There are "waters to swim in," in the Scriptures. You need not think there is no room for your imaginations there. Give the coursers their reins: you shall find enough within that book to exhaust them at their highest speed. You need not think that your memory shall have nothing to remember; if you had learnt the book through and through, and knew all its texts, you would have much to remember above that, to remember its inner meaning, and its conversations with your soul, and the mysterious power it has had over your spirit, when it has touched the strings of your nature as a master harper touches his harp strings, and has brought forth music which you knew not to be sleeping there. There is no faculty but what will find room enough in the word, if we will but obediently bring it to the service of the Lord.

HT: Pyromaniacs

Love in a Time of Swine Flu

"A man's spirit will endure sickness, but a crushed spirit who can bear?" Proverbs 18:14

The history of humanity is the history of sickness, disease, and death. When sin came, death came, and sickness remains the leading agent of death. The horseman of pestilence has visited plagues and pandemics upon humanity throughout the centuries. Even in the age of modern medicine and the conquest of so many diseases, the very real risk of pandemic remains -- and we feel it in our souls.

The outbreak of swine flu now dominates the headlines and news programs, with at least 150 deaths in Mexico already recorded even as the disease is now confirmed around the world. For many years medical authorities have warned of a coming influenza pandemic -- a modern plague -- that could kill on a magnitude similar to the 1918 outbreak that killed over 100 million persons worldwide. (Read the rest HERE)