Grace Fellowship

There are several things which seem to make time stand still. One is the memory of my Grandmother. She was raised a Methodist and later became Baptist after my dad married mom. She was always way over the top, out of control, good to her grandchildren. This wasn’t always true of how she treated other family members. Grandmother was a strange dichotomy being enthusiastically in love with Jesus and ready to share her affection at the drop of a hat. She was also ready to tell someone what was what when things didn’t go her way! You never had to wonder what Grandmother was thinking.

At her grave side, we couldn’t help but laugh under our breaths, as the pastor told the story of how Grandmother would simply bake a pie for someone who offended her. No doubt, a story she told many times to him while he was visiting her! I’m sure she did bake the pie. But, this usually came after a long string of verbal and emotional antics. Was the pie really a peace offering or was it gratuity for guilt? Only heaven knows!

In all her humanness she is the one who led me to trust Christ as my savior. I never doubted Grandmother’s love for me and for this I am grateful.

While visiting her in the hospital, it didn’t appear that she would be with us much longer. Her pastor, my brother, and I were walking down the hall talking about her going home to be with the Lord. We agreed to pray and the pastor said something like, “Let’s just agree whether she lives or whether she dies that the will of the Lord be done.” My first thought was if we are willing to accept whatever happens to her as the will of the Lord, why bother praying?

Many think that whatever happens to us can only happen because it is God’s will. This relieves them of any personal responsibility while blaming God for everything that happens. It is a kind of circumstance theology.

I read where a very popular minister said he knew it wasn’t God’s will to heal his wife of cancer because they prayed and she wasn’t healed. Therefore, it wasn’t God’s will to heal her! The outcome of her circumstances determined his beliefs. Wouldn’t it be better to simply admit that I don’t know why she is sick? To blame God, when He is not guilty, is to impinge upon His character. We live in a fallen world, in a fallen place that is imperfect. Things happen that aren’t the will of God. Someone once said, “Heaven is the only place where God’s will is always done. Hell is the only place God’s will is never done. And, on the earth sometimes His will is done and sometimes it is not.” Are we afraid of losing our faith because we don’t have all the answers?

In Luke 13:16, Jesus said Satan had bound this woman with sickness for eighteen years. In Acts 10:38, sickness is referred to as an oppression of the devil. In contrast, some have even said, “Satan is an unwilling puppet in the hand of God to do His evil bidding because God is too good to do it Himself. The enemy can’t do anything to us without it passing through the all-seeing eyes of God. While God may not do evil, He allows it.” This is not what Jesus said!

While we fight over semantics, the end result is the same. If George hires a hit man to kill me because he doesn’t want to do it himself- doesn’t that make George a murderer also? Jesus said the thief comes to steal, kill and destroy- not God.

1 Timothy 2:4 (CEV) says, “God wants everyone to be saved and to know the whole truth.”

In Job 38:2, God rebukes Job for daring to open his mouth without knowledge and speaking when he did not understand what was going on. In other words, he didn’t know what he was talking about. Yet, many want to quote this man’s ignorance when it comes to the Father.

No, God is a good God. Goodness and love are His nature. I would rather be accused of believing He is just too good than to be accused of having slandered His character and misrepresent Him in this way.