walking with God – The Fantasy Nook

Sunday Stories – Set-Apart Living Pt. 2

Introduction

Last time on Sunday Stories, we talked about set-apart living and what it is and is not. This week’s focus will be on how we can go about a set-apart life practically. It does us no good to know what something means if we don’t also know how to utilize what we know, so this second piece is an indispensable part of the discussion.

What Does Set-Apart Living Mean Practically?

Set-apart living is going to look a little different in practicality for each of us. For me, God has nudged me to eliminate certain books that are likely to contain content of an impure nature and to spend more time listening to or reading biographies and autobiographies of Christians who did live a set-apart life to Christ. The reading content I have removed led only to temptations to sully my mind and soul, which should be an inner sanctuary for my Savior. However subtle the impurity and however “clean” the immorality’s nature is compared to the worst the world can offer, books that are heavy in this content or that are focused on it present the encouragement to sin. So, as Scripture says to lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily besets us, God drew me to eliminating the temptation. But He didn’t just draw me toward eliminating the temptation and then leave that space a vacuum that could be filled with other temptations. Instead, He drew me to filling that extra space in my reading time with Christian autobiographies and biographies that could encourage me in my walk with Him instead of tearing me down. Furthermore, He has also convicted me of things I spend too much time doing, even though they aren’t bad, and that has led to placing limitations on my writing time. I only write two hours a day, at most, instead of writing every spare moment. This leaves me with time to focus on His word and prayer as well as time to spend with those who can help encourage me in my walk with Him.

For you, it might be the same, but it’s highly likely that it’s something else. Maybe it’s a friendship that doesn’t point you closer to Christ. Maybe it’s cutting back on social activities to ensure you can make Him a priority. For every individual, it’s a little different, but the outflow of those changes is the same: a clearly set-apart, different life that reflects the nature of the One we are walking closely with.

Signposts of a Set-Apart Life

As a natural outflow of the changes in our focus, attitude, and hearts, our lives will begin to show clear differences from the world. As Romans 8:7-10 says, the spirit and the flesh are in enmity. They cannot coexist. Those who live in the Spirit, set-apart to God, display the qualities of their Master, Christ. They exude an unusual peace, joy, and confidence. They aren’t perfect, but they seem to have an inner radiance that is unexplained by any worldly lifestyle or standard.

Another sign of a set-apart life that, though the person is not living in sin or in anything worthy of reproach, they are still ridiculed. For example, young people who choose to honor God and their future spouse by staying pure physically and emotionally are mocked, and these days, it isn’t just the world that does the mocking. It can even be people within the church who should have been supporting and guiding, not discouraging and rebuking. If you take a strong view on sin? You’re seen as being intolerant. Refuse to abide bad language, crude jokes, and inappropriate behavior, you’re a prude or a goody-two-shoes.

Choosing to live the right way out of genuine love for our Lord will give us an inner loveliness, but the world doesn’t value that sort of beauty and so, as a whole, will deride, dismiss, and detest it in others because it brings conviction and uncomfortability simply by existing and refusing to take part in the unholy activities of the world or by giving up behaviors and things that pull us away from God.

The Character of a Set-Apart Life

But a set-apart life is also characterized by a spirit of meekness and love. One who is walking in the Spirit and living holy before God is one who adorns the Gospel of Christ and makes it lovely. This means that, even when we must tell someone they are doing wrong according to the Scripture, we do it in a way that is tempered with grace and love. A set-apart Christian is one God is teaching daily to approach those around them with gracious truth.

Those who are living in Christ may at times have to take a firm stand against sin (in fact, it is inevitable that this will happen). But when they do so, the attitude in which they do it will be markedly different from those who are following a list of rules. There will be not only Bible behind what they say but also a spirit of humility. At times, the truth must be stated bluntly. As Proverbs says, there is a time to answer the fool according to his foolishness. But most of the time, in dealing with the world around us, harshness under the guise of being blunt is the MO of Christians who have the right doctrine but are not approaching those erring from that doctrine or those truths in a humble, love-centered mindset.

On the flip side, there are those who sacrifice the truth because they would prefer not to offend in the name of “love”. A set-apart Christian is prone to one or the other of these areas as much as any Christian, but their lives will reflect the balance Christ had in His approach to people. At times, a stern rebuke may be called for so long as it is done from a heart of humility and concern for God’s glory as well as for that person. But at other times, a stern rebuke would do more damage than good, and a soft answer is necessary. Only the life that is walking in step with Christ will reflect the balanced approach needed to respond to both individuals and situations in a Christ-like manner.

The Conversation of a Set Apart Life

Often, though we may face social disdain and ridicule from society, I have found in my life that when I am walking close to God and focusing on Him, it comes out in my conversations with unbelievers in a way that results not in scorn but instead in either bewilderment or appreciation. This isn’t because I’m somehow finding a magical formula for approaching others. It’s simply because when I’m walking close to God and my mind is focused on God, my view of people is aligned with His view of people. He died for sinners, and I am talking to sinners (whether saved or not). Should my actions not reflect the same love of Christ that was both meek and lion-hearted at the same time? Should my discussions with non-believers not reflect His firm remark to the woman at the well regarding her sin but also His gentleness with the sinners He came to save?

More often than not, it is those who are religious and have become puffed up in their own perceived righteousness that are most critical and cruel to those living in sin or even in some perceived “error”, and they, like the Pharisees, must be firmly rebuked.

But those who are un-believers? I have often received the comment that I was “not what they expected” or that even though I stand for my beliefs and am firm on the Bible, I am “more open-minded than most conservative Christians”. They define conservative Christians as harsh, unfeeling, uncaring, and prideful. At times I have been all of those things, and I know this response from any unbeliever I may come into contact with is through no merit of my own. In and of myself, I can be exactly what they believe all conservative Christians are: unduly judgmental, harsh, critical, and unloving in the way I present the truth. I naturally lean toward the side that is inclined to look at those living lives not in line with Scripture and to turn my nose up at them. But God has shown me a better way and has patiently worked on me (and still is working on me) to develop His purity, holiness, and loveliness in me and in the way that I interact with people.

The God-Given Encouragement in Living a Set Apart Life

My point in saying this is to simply encourage you that though the world’s system will mock you and many individuals may also do so, there will be those in your workplace, your school, and your neighborhood that take notice when God is shaping your words, actions, and attitudes. And they will not only take notice, but they will appreciate it. They will be more willing to ask you to pray for them and for those they care about. They will understand that somehow, you are an individual that is close to Him. They censor their behavior too, in many cases.

I’ve seen this time and time again in my life and that of others. Many of the people I know refrain from swearing around me because they’ve noticed that I don’t swear. A few weeks to a month ago, my coworkers and I were discussing the issues with the virus, and I mentioned that if you’re feeling ill and have symptoms, you should get tested. I stated that I’d been ill over one weekend and had gone to get tested because I didn’t know what was causing the issue.

I felt better the next day (and didn’t have the virus, as it turned out), but I went anyway just in case. My boss remarked that many people my age can’t tell the difference between being hungover, allergies, and actually having the virus. But she followed it up by saying, “Of course, we know your problem isn’t going to be a hangover.”

They knew that to be true because of looking at how I talk, dress, act, and live my life. They knew that because of my stance on the Bible, I wouldn’t do certain things, and drinking is one of them because I don’t want to open any door for Satan to gain a foothold through insobriety and drunkenness. My hope is that all of those in my life see Christ in me and that with each passing day, the image of my Lord and Savior grows clearer. But if I’m not living a set-apart life, that will not be true of me.

The Power to Live a Set Apart Life

Of course, we wouldn’t fully cover the topic if we didn’t take a moment here at the end to focus on where the power to do this comes from. It can never come from us because in and of ourselves we are unholy, unlovely, and thoroughly sin-stained creatures. Instead, the power to live the kind of set-apart life that honors God comes from living in Him and in His power.

It comes from walking closely with Him and from going to him for strength every day whether we are struggling with any given temptation or not. It comes from our relationship with our King and Heavenly Father, not from within ourselves. It comes from listening closely to the voice of the Holy Spirit as He does His work to guide us through God’s Word and through the conscience that God has given each and every one of us.

The moment that we allow any hint of pride to creep in and begin to believe that we have the strength in ourselves to achieve this set-apart life of purity and holiness is the moment that we lose the battle. Our greatest enemy is our own flesh in so many instances, and the only way we can combat it is if we’re living out our position in Christ.

Conclusion

A set-apart life isn’t easy. There must be sacrifices to live in step with a holy God. While our salvation is secured by grace through faith and can never be lost no matter how heinous the sin (See 1 & 2 Corinthians for an example), our fellowship and friendship with God can be broken if we clutter our lives with unholy things, idols of any shape or form, sin of any sort, or so much busyness that God is pushed off to only when we can “make time” for Him.

But as much as a holy life isn’t easy, the worth of it is beyond measure. It’s worth any cost. If you’ve been on the fence on the matter of set-apart living, I encourage you to take the first steps toward it. Spend some time in serious prayer asking God to show you what He would have you to remove or to add, and ask Him to soften your heart toward Him. This soul-searching should be coupled with His Word to shine a spotlight on your soul and any areas of your heart and life that need cleansing.

If there are things you already know need to go, get rid of them and put down some boundaries in those areas that will help you to ensure you don’t let those things creep back in. A holy, set-apart life is of immeasurable value. Don’t let it pass you by because you bought into the lies of an unholy, ungodly culture around you.

Sunday Stories: The Attributes of God

Featured Ariel Paiement

Introduction

This week’s focus is on the attributes of God. Attributes are concrete details about who He is; it differs from essence in that essence is what makes Him God while an attribute is part of how He works out what makes Him God. For example, if I were describing attributes of my own, I might say I have hazel eyes. It’s a part of who I am concretely, but it doesn’t tell anyone what I’m like in terms of behavior or personality. It does not tell you who I am, only some aspect of what I appear as physically. In the case of God being a spirit, we can understand attributes to be a description of how His essence impacts us and our world. He has no physical attributes to describe, but He does have some very important attributes that link to His essence.

These attributes fall into two categories: those not linked to morality and those that are. We’ll start with the non-moral attributes, and then when we reach the moral ones, we’ll start off with a discussion of why morality must be linked to God and why these attributes matter so much.

Non-Moral Attributes

Omnipresence (Acts 17:27-28; Hebrews 4:13)

This attribute links directly to God’s immensity, which we discussed last time in the discussion on God’s essence. What is omnipresence? It is a logical conclusion or extension of His immensity that states God is present everywhere and at all times, not in pieces of Himself spread out to reach everyone but in His entirety due to how immense He is. If you haven’t yet read the post I wrote on God’s essence, please start there. This post isn’t going to make much sense without it because you can’t understand the end conclusion properly if you haven’t seen where it began.

Omniscience (Proverbs 15:3; Psalm 147:5; Matthew 10:30; Micah 5:2)

When it comes to omniscience, this is God’s ability to know all things, and it stems from both His immensity and His eternity/infinity. Because of these essences of God, He knows everything down to things so minute we don’t even think of or care about them. This links directly to the concept that His knowledge is infinite in both breadth and depth, but also in time. Nothing can, has, or ever will surprise God, and He will never need to learn anything new. He already knows it all.

Omnipotence (Genesis 17:11; Job 42:2; Jeremiah 32:17; Matthew 19:26)

This is the attribute of God that is all-powerful, all-mighty, and undaunted by even the greatest or most impossible feats. This one, however, will usually lead to a question from skeptics and even some believers. If God is all these things, particularly if He is all powerful, why allow sin? And why not save everyone?

This leads to an essential point in our discussion that must be made before we go further. If you miss this, then falling into doctrinal errors and heresies surrounding God’s nature become very, very easy.

How He Exercises His Attributes

The key point here is to look at what God says about and reveals about Himself, both in Scripture and in the world around us. He is a God of order. Furthermore, He Himself does not change, and He is unable to deny His nature because to do so would be to change. Therefore, when it comes to His attributes, He must therefore exercise them in a way that is not only consistent with His nature but also in a way that will not violate any other attribute. If He exercised His attributes in a way that violated another attribute, that would be to violate part of His nature, and as we made clear here and in the previous article on His essence, that is not something God will do.

But if He’s all powerful, why can’t He will that He exercise love and ignore His justice, holiness, and other attributes, for example, to just allow everyone into heaven? Because He only does what He wills, and He is clear that He doesn’t want sin, inconsistency in His nature, or violation of His attributes.

This is why those who focus on just His love or just His judgment then must force His use of one attribute to violate another. Most people who say things like “God wouldn’t do that because He’s all loving” or “There are some sins that are greater than others/will send you to hell if you’re living in them” don’t realize that what they are doing is saying “God will exercise this attribute I like more over the others, even if it requires Him to violate or invalidate the other in doing so”. But that is in fact what they are saying when they pick one attribute to focus on and ignore or sideline another. They are essentially saying that God is, at best, inconsistent or, at worst, that He has changed in His nature.

So in conclusion on this particular attribute, He is able to do anything, but He will not do everything because He has control over His power, and He knows how to exercise it according to His will and in accordance with His nature. (Habakkuk 1:13; II Timothy 2:13; James 1:13)

Immutability (James 1:17; Malachi 3:6; Romans 11:29)

Immutability is the attribute that has do with His unchanging aspect. He cannot mutate or change either Himself or His will and the plan that He established before the foundation of the world. They will never alter due to any outside force or influence either. Furthermore, He doesn’t change His mind on His promises or His dictates. (Numbers 23:19; Psalm 110:4)

But then, you will ask, what about when it says God repented of what He was going to do in various Bible passages? A valid question until you actually dig into the word repent, but let’s start out with giving a few examples people often bring up. In Exodus 32:14, we have Moses interceding for the people, and God “repenting of the evil He had thought to do”. Then, in II Samuel 24:16, there was a plague God had sent on the nation of Israel in punishment for their king’s disobedience in numbering the people, which was an act of pride and desire to compete on the level of nations around the nation of Israel as well as in direct disobedience to God’s clear dictate not to do so. The plague was so bad that it would have wiped out the nation of Israel had it continued, but God stays His hand in this verse and says it is enough.

Sure looks like God is changing His mind and His will in these passages, doesn’t it? People have a real issue with this idea that God could start out in one direction and then change to another without having changed His will. Furthermore, this leads to a difficulty with God altering the way He handles people through time and the idea of dispensationalism (the concept that God dealt with different people with different approaches at different points in history). For example, He only allowed approach to Him through Israel in the Old Testament. But the law didn’t save; it was a way to show trust and obedience to God before Christ. So now that Christ has come, God changed the approach and has said we must come to Him through Christ alone, not through the Law and our own merit, which can never truly restore fellowship. The Law was no longer necessary, then, because Christ’s death allowed Him to write the Law on our hearts.

But people struggle with this because they assume that a change in approach means a change in nature. This is a fallacious understanding. Why? To understand, we have to look at the word “repent” used in the KJV version of the passages in Exodus and II Samuel, and we also have to take a look at whose perspective that “repenting” is being viewed from.

Repent and the Perspective It is Given To Us From In God’s Word

Repent means to change direction in its simplest form. It means to stop doing what you are and to go another way. This in and of itself doesn’t really help people to understand why a change in approach doesn’t equal a change in nature though, nor does it clear up the confusion as to how God can change approach and not change His will. To understand that, we have to combine this definition with an understanding of whose perspective this word is seen from.

The important thing most people miss is that repent is seen from the viewpoint of humanity, not God’s. How do we know that? First of all, if God could change His mind in a way that changes His actual will, He wouldn’t be eternal, omniscient, or immense. This would, in the end, make Him no longer God as His eternal and immense essences are a part of what makes Him God. Without them, He would not be Himself.

At the end of the day, then, we will all go the way God planned, and God’s plan won’t change. But why say repent then? Because God did, in a sense, “change His mind” from our perspective. We do not have the eternal perspective, so to Moses pleading with God not to destroy Israel or to David praying for God not to wipe out the nation of Israel (something God had promised wouldn’t happen), it would look very much like God changed His mind or His desires in response to their prayers of faith. But what really happened?

The reality is that if God were to go through with what He was doing all the way to the end, doing so would force Him to violate His promises or His nature, neither of which being things He can do. The end goal therefore was not what we assumed it was, but often He allows something to start or sends us down a path for a time to teach, correct, or prepare us with that end goal in mind. He knows what He’s doing. And even though we look at the path and wonder why God would “change His mind” or send us to do something He “didn’t want us to do”, the reality is that the direction you were headed in was a part of the plan but wasn’t going to be the only direction He needed to take us to get to the end. So, while we could see the change in direction as His changing His mind, the reality that is in keeping with His nature is that His plan always had the change in direction there.

This is in keeping with the fact that He knows everything. He already knew we or others around us needed to go in one direction for a while before heading off in another in order for His plan both on a personal level and on a much larger scale to come to fruition. If we understand then both the meaning of the word repent and the perspective in which the Bible presents it to help us understand a God who is so far from human that without human words we couldn’t understand, then this is no longer a problem like so many feel it is.

Moral Attributes

Now we get to the second section of this topic: morality and moral attributes.

To begin with, we must understand why it is important that God has attributes linked to morality. This is because morality only exists if there is an outside standard above anything we can understand. Why do I say this? Well, let’s take an example from today’s world. Some people object to God and any worldview that contains Him because if God exists He allowed Hitler, and Hitler was evil. But if God doesn’t exist, why was Hitler wrong? Why was Hitler wrong but euthanasia, abortion, and other crimes against humanity are all okay? We as individuals all put value on lives. It’s normal to do so. We recognize an intrinsic worth to them. But if God is removed from the equation, then those who have removed Him still put value on lives, but they must define it their own way. Therefore, those who object to Hitler object not on the grounds of true morality, but on the grounds that he did not determine value in a way they agreed with. They determine value in their own minds and use that value on life or those moral guidelines to determine whether others are right or wrong.

But here’s the problem. If it comes from us, it can’t be morality. If there is no absolute standard, no yardstick to measure by that is unchanging, then we cannot judge anyone for anything they do. Murdering people en mass is okay. Killing babies is okay. Rape, incest, molestation? All okay. Maybe certain individuals don’t want to do those things, but they do not have any standard by which they can say “you are wrong because you do those things” since all they have is their own opinion, which, without a being outside of us to validate it, is as valid as the opinion of the serial killer raping and killing women.

People don’t like this. But truth is truth regardless of one’s feelings. Anyone who believes there is a God or that the Bible is infallible must, by their own belief system, therefore believe in right or wrong, and they must use God’s yardstick, not their own, to measure by.

But those who do not believe there is a God or that the Bible is infallible must also, by their own belief system, believe there is no absolute truth, no real right or wrong, and must therefore allow all things even if they themselves do not wish to participate in a given action. Equally so, anyone who says that we cannot know God or that we cannot trust what He has said in Scripture because it is not God’s revelation but is man’s ideas, must also say the same. If you don’t know the measuring stick and haven’t been given it, you are left in the same moral quagmire as those who have declared there is no God but fickle humanity, which changes its ideas of right and wrong on a whim.

With that established, what attributes of God are linked to morality, and what kind of measuring stick do they give us for determining right and wrong in our world?

Holiness (Leviticus 19:2; Isaiah 40:23; Exodus 26:33; 1 Peter 1:15-16; John 17:11; Psalm 47:8; Psalm 89:14; and Isaiah 6:1-3)

The word holy or holiness means completely apart from. In God’s case, the Bible uses the word to indicate that He is completely apart from and exalted above all creation as our Creator. But in the case of humans who have been redeemed, it means we are set apart from the world (but not exalted above it as we are still human and are not God).

When it comes to God, this attribute encompasses the ideas that He is separate from His creation, sin, unrighteousness, and moral evil. This is the unchanging yardstick by which we then measure ourselves against when it comes to morality, or at least, a part of it. When compared to a spotless, blameless God who has never once done anything evil, we who have shed innocent blood and sacrificed our children on the altars of false gods or the altar of our own selfishness suddenly seem a lot more wicked. Even those who might say, well, I’ve never murdered anyone or done child sacrifice, are stained black by their own sins when faced with something as pure as a holy God.

Look at it this way. If you dumped red wine onto a white dress, would the stain be any less red and obvious just because you only dumped a little onto it and not an entire glass? No. The red stain would still stick out like a sore thumb because the dress is such a pure, bright white that any spot or blemish must show. God’s holiness is like that dress, pure and radiant, and we are, when compared to it, all the red stain.

Did God’s Holiness Disappear In The New Testament?

There are some who would say that God got rid of His unwavering holiness in favor of His love when the New Testament rolled around. Those who say this believe that He loves everyone and will therefore excuse the sin that stains us despite the fact that His holiness keeps Him from having fellowship with evil, unrighteousness, and sin. This is not accurate.

His holiness cannot disappear in the New Testament because it is the basis for all other moral attributes, including His love. It is the first one we’ve discussed for that very reason. If you remove His holiness, He is no different from Zeus or other pagan gods who were just like us (or worse), slept with anything that moved in many cases, and did all manner of reprehensible things. Emphasize anything above His holiness, and you reduce Him to that level.

Furthermore, God’s holiness is the basis for needing salvation and the basis for Christ’s death on the cross in the first place. If God had ceased to be holy, not only would He cease to be God, but He never would have needed to send Christ to die for us in order to restore the fellowship broken when Adam and Eve sinned. His holiness demanded that the stain of sin be removed before fellowship could be restored. But as the one offended by our affront and our sin in Adam and Eve’s fall, He had to be the one to reach out and bridge the gap created by broken fellowship. The offended must reach out to the offender to restore, not the other way around. The offender can plead for forgiveness, restoration, and mercy, but if the offended chooses not to give it, then nothing can fix the rift the offender created. As such, God had to initiate, and man had nothing to do with that choice to initiate. They played no role in it and, in fact, as we often see, wanted nothing to do with restoration anyway.

So then, God’s holiness must be the first moral attribute we understand and behold, and it must also not cease simply because a Savior was sent or His approach to us changed in accordance with His Son’s death on the cross. For if it did, then He would cease to be God and Christ’s death on the cross would be meaningless for one man with a sin nature cannot die to redeem another with the same ailment.

Righteousness and Judgment/Justice (Psalm 89:14; Isaiah 61:8; II Chronicles 6:15; Exodus 34:7)

This moral attribute is a natural extension of His holiness. Because He is the holy creator and is above His creation, He has the right to pass judgment on His creation. God is also a God who loves the concept of right versus wrong. If he didn’t, we wouldn’t even have a right and wrong, nor would we have a conscience, which stems directly from His concern with us knowing what He views as right versus wrong. This attribute states that God’s justice rewards right and punishes wrong, even if He is longsuffering (patient) and does not immediately heap condemnation on the heads of those who have done wrong.

God’s Goodness (Mark 10:18; I John 4:8,10; I John 4:16; Job 14:5; Psalm 145:9; Matthew 5:45)

This moral attribute of God has four sub sections. We’ll start with His love.

God’s Love (Mark 10:18; 1 John 4:8,10,16)

God is love. Does that statement strike some of you as a little strange? If you’ve grown up in certain sectors of the Church, then you hear about His judgment all the time, but you don’t hear much about God being love. That’s what the Bible says though. He doesn’t just have love; He is love. Furthermore, only God is truly, completely good and therefore capable of fully loving in the sense the Bible presents (though through His grace and power, His children can show this love as well).

What kind of love is God? It isn’t an emotional love or one that ebbs and flows. It is agape love, which in the Bible is a love that leads to action characterized by sacrifice. Nowhere is this seen more clearly than in the death of Christ on the cross for our salvation.

God’s Benevolence (Job 14:5; Psalm 145:9; Matthew 5:45)

This second category of His goodness is the way in which He takes care of His creation regardless of whether they serve Him, acknowledge Him, and so on. He often goes above and beyond what we need and allows us to prosper, even if we turn our backs on Him and choose not to serve Him.

Why is this? Well, as one wise person said, for a Christian, this world is the only Hell we’ll ever know. For the unsaved, however, this world is the only heaven they will ever know. So while God is benevolent to all on this earth and in this life, those who reject Him in spite of His love and His benevolence have an eternity of suffering ahead, according to the Bible. So why should we be concerned about whether the wicked temporarily prosper when we know their end? Instead of being jealous, an understanding of God’s benevolence leads us to pity them and pray earnestly for their salvation.

God’s Mercy (Ephesians 2:4; Romans 11:30-31; Isaiah 55:7)

God’s mercy is the way in which His goodness is shown to those in distress. It is not exercised all the time toward everyone. This is important because it leads to the point that He can exercise His attributes differently in different situations. Going back to what we focused on earlier, God won’t exercise one attribute in a way that violates another. So if He exercises His mercy in a way that overlooks justice, then it would violate His holiness and righteousness, and He will not do so. But if He can exercise it in a way that doesn’t violate the other attributes, He is free to do so.

This means that because of His nature, He cannot do unfair or unjust things just to be nice. Think about that. How often do we hear people say things like God would never send so and so to Hell because they never heard the Gospel and that would be cruel, or God would never do ABC because He’s loving? I bet we’ve all heard those statements. Maybe we’ve even said them. The problem with this is that if we say those things, what we’re really saying is that God will do unfair, unjust things in order to be nice to those people. They are saying His love takes precedence over and violates His other attributes.

This is another attribute that relates to salvation, as well. God needed a way to save that satisfied holiness by not ignoring our sin and leaving us unchanged in that sin. But He also needed to satisfy His goodness. So, He sent Christ, God incarnate, to take our sin because He alone had none of His own sins to pay for and had an infinite ability to exchange His life for ours through substitutionary atonement.

God’s Grace

This aspect of God’s goodness is the way He manifests it to those who have actively gone out of their way to be undeserving. This is shown to man in general in His forebearance with us. One sin, one time is enough to make Him just in simply killing us as that is the penalty for sin, but instead, His grace constrains Him, and He chooses not to immediately mete out punishment. But it is also shown more specifically to individuals in our salvation, which the Bible is very clear is through grace in Jesus Christ.

Truth (Job 38:1-2; Job 27:1-6)

This is the last moral attribute of God, and it simply is that God, in what He knows, what He declares, and what He says about Himself and creation, is utterly true and unbiased. Only God is fully capable of being utterly true and unbiased. Humanity has perceptions and perspectives, and we see reality through those perceptions. Some of us are closer to the truth than others, but we are not infallibly true like God is in our understanding.

This is an important point because unless God sees reality with no bias or perception, the Bible cannot be infallibly true. Unless He is truth and is outside of creation, so utterly holy that we cannot fully comprehend Him, the Bible isn’t trustworthy because His perceptions and ideas about the universe, creation, and even Himself, might not be totally accurate or infallible. So we see that if this point or any of the other attributes He holds are removed, He must cease to be truly God and we can therefore know nothing for certain about a Creator or the Divine because there is no source but our own imagination to turn to.

Conclusion

I hope that this discussion has been both instructive and grounding for my fellow believers as well as thought-provoking for those who do not believe. Our perception and idea of God (who He is, His character, and His very existence even) is the single most important thing we think because on it must rest everything else about our worldview. Our belief in God or our lack of it determines how we live our lives, what we do, and why we think what we do, even if we don’t recognize it.

Christians, if we have a wrong view of God, we end up on tenuous ground, unable to fully support our own arguments to either a world going to Hell or to other Christians who challenge us. In I Peter, God tells us through Peter that we should be ready to give an answer for the hope that is in us. But if we do not know the God we serve, we are in danger of being unable to give that answer to a world that needs to see it. I know that this study has definitely helped to ground me personally and to solidify why I believe what I do about God, and my hope and prayer is that it has done the same for you. We have the answers for a critical, lost world right in front of us, so let us not be ignorant of them and therefore represent to the world a God who is not the God of the Bible.

Sunday Stories: Unexpected Hardships

Featured Ariel Paiement

If you’re getting the idea by now that much of what I’ve learned has been through suffering, adversity, and seeing how wrong things go around me when people make bad decisions, you’d have the right idea. Today’s lesson I’m sharing about is no different.

Where it all began

I was beginning my junior year of high school and starting out on my journey as a dual credit student in the year 2014. For those who don’t know, dual credit is when a high school student takes college level classes for credit both in high school and towards college later on. I was majoring in business and was there to not only finish out my high school education but also to earn my associate’s degree. But the journey to that goal was anything but easy.

Class work wasn’t as hard as I expected, but I had more responsibility because I’d started working a job that required a lot of long, difficult hours. I wasn’t full-time, but with full-time school and a job that could give me upwards of 30 hours a week, I didn’t exactly have much free time or room to rest. This was fine by me as I frequently did more in a day than most people would consider normal. Granted, I spent most of that time in less physical labor than I was doing at work, but that was fine. I knew how to work hard and had grown up doing a lot of different manual labor tasks around the house.

At this time in my life, I was very withdrawn, however. I had serious social anxiety, and I still remember that my dad’s advice to me my first day of school was: “Don’t hide in a corner. Make friends and avoid doing what you usually do because it makes you look like a snob who doesn’t want to talk to anyone.”

Maybe not the nicest way of saying it, but honestly, it’s what people usually thought. They assumed my reservations about interacting with people was just me being stuck up. Whether it was or not really didn’t matter.

My point in saying all of this is to lay the stage for you. At sixteen, I was doing far more than most high school students would be doing. I thought I could handle it no matter how stressful it was. I was wrong.

My entire first year of college, I had one cold or virus after another. I still had to go to work, though, because how else would I pay the tuition fees? So, I ended up hyped up on cold and flu medications constantly. Had I known how badly all of the stress would start to damage my body, I might have taken it easy, but I’ve never been particularly good about knowing my limits. I’m stubborn, and in my mind, the sky is the limit. If no one steps in and pulls me back down to ground me in reality, my ambitions, passions, and to-do lists can quickly start to drown me and I don’t even really understand why it’s a problem. Unfortunately, by the time someone did this for me in high school, it was too late.

I already had fairly extreme depression and serious anxiety due to still having unresolved issues with my mom and the aftershocks of her surgery, but with all the added stress on top of it, I began to break down mentally, emotionally, and physically. I passed classes with flying colors and was one of the harder workers at work, but inside? Everything was crumbling to pieces, spiraling out of control, and heading toward a crash. But I kept going.

Maybe a semester into my first year of dual credit enrollment, I started experiencing terrible abdominal pain. Usually, it was just a sharp or dull pain in one side or another, and I’d ignore it because what else was I to do? I had work and school, and in my mind, I had no time to lie in bed. I did enough of that on the days when my depression was so bad that I did almost nothing productive unless it wasn’t optional. In my mind, the abdominal pain was probably just my body’s response to all the meds.

So, I stopped taking them for a while and suffered with the symptoms of the cold or whatever viral infections I’d caught during that year. I’d work anyway as long as I could still talk to the customers ordering food from me, and I tried to soldier on.

The pains got worse, and I started to have bad attacks where I would wake up in the middle of the night screaming and crying because the pain was so crippling. The first time it happened, my parents thought my appendix might be rupturing because of the severity and the location of the pain. It wasn’t, but so far as the doctors could tell, nothing was wrong with me. I went through xrays in those first two years when we went in, but they found nothing.

So, I went on with life. I sucked it up and learned to deal with the pain. There were days I was hurting so much I couldn’t go to school or work, and there were days where I would work anyway and people would worry because I looked so sick. But I pushed on, trying to ignore the questions that rose in my head. Questions like: why is God letting this happen? Am I being punished for something I did? What did I do to deserve this? Is this ever going to end, or am I stuck with it for the rest of my life?

I’m Sick? Like, Chronically Ill Sick?

The doctor we were seeing at the time diagnosed me with IBS, irritable bowel syndrome. For those who don’t know what that is, it’s a chronic condition that results in a lot of bloating, cramping, gas, and general abdominal discomfort. Most people end up having issues with having normal bowel movements too. I’ll leave it at that and spare you any graphic explanations. Needless to say, it isn’t life threatening, but they don’t know what causes it and have no cure. I was devastated. She gave me a laxative to help with my constipation and recommended I avoid foods that upset my stomach. She didn’t do any other tests to rule anything else out, and nothing she gave me actually worked.

That was toward the beginning of the ordeal. I refused to go see her after the second time of being given the same solutions that didn’t work. So, I suffered for the next two years while I finished my degree. The summer before I went off to Florida to start my bachelor’s degree, we switched doctors. My parents were worried, scared a bit, and couldn’t stand seeing me in such constant pain with no answers. So, they found a doctor who would do tests.

That whole summer, I went through test after test with every one of them coming back with no answers as to what was wrong with me. I got more and more angry, depressed, and confused with every negative test result they did. Did I want to have some debilitating illness? No. But I wanted answers, and to me, it seemed God was refusing them. How could He let this happen and then give me so little consolation? I couldn’t understand it.

During that summer, I spent whatever time I wasn’t working sleeping and trying to ignore the pain. I didn’t do much of anything, and I spent very little time with people. I was too short-tempered to handle anything, really, and my family wasn’t patient with it for the most part. My mom and dad were supportive, but my siblings either didn’t understand or didn’t care that the constant pain made me crankier than usual. I tried to put on a brave face and act like it was all okay, but I couldn’t.

Answers at last

Finally, after all the testing, the diagnosis was handed down. I did have IBS after all, and it wasn’t going to just disappear. I wasn’t going to die, but I was going to have to live with an illness that would cause my abdominal/intestinal muscles to spasm for no reason, resulting in sometimes crippling pain. I lost it.

When I heard that I really did have IBS and that there was no medication that could do anything to solve it, I shut down. I couldn’t process everything I was feeling, and I didn’t understand how God could allow it. I wanted to trust He had a good reason, but at that point in my life, my trust in Him was seriously failing. After everything with my mom, I was hurting, angry, and feeling betrayed even nearly seven years after it happened. I never would’ve admitted it, but I didn’t trust God at all. I didn’t know what He was doing, but it sure looked like He was trying to wreck my life, as awful as that sounded. I held on and stubbornly refused to admit that, instead choosing to make my head believe that He had a good reason even if it was painful then. My heart, however, knew that it wasn’t real faith, and it didn’t get on bored.

Walking through the storm with God

I’m so glad God didn’t leave me there. He could’ve, but He didn’t. The years that followed at Pensacola Christian College were hard. I had no choice but to attend class even when sick because of the attendance policies. Even though I needed more sick days to give my body the breaks it needed at times, I couldn’t take them unless I wanted to lose an entire letter grade or, if I had two weeks of absences in a class in a semester, fail the class entirely. It didn’t matter how well I did at teaching myself the subject or succeeding even if I missed class, I would fail if I let my health keep me from physically being there. Many classes and church services (or other required events), I barely knew what was going on because my mind was so clouded with pain and trying not to be a distraction to those around me that I didn’t really hear anything going on around me.

But despite all the dietary restrictions, hardships caused by the strict rules they set (which for any other student without a chronic illness would really not have been that bad, to be honest), and my own broken, battered heart, God did work. He taught me that even though life is pain, it can still be joyous anyway. He taught me that others could benefit from my suffering if I was willing to take a step of faith in Him and keep a positive attitude with a willingness to share. It was hard to do that. I’m not an optimist by nature. If anything, I’m a realist who borders on pessimism in some cases. But if I hadn’t chosen to desperately cling to the Scriptures that say He plans everything and works it all out to the good of those who love Him, I would’ve lost my mind, I think. The stress I endured and the guilt I felt on days where I couldn’t attend events and knew I’d get a mark on my record for it or would have to attend the recording later was nearly unbearable, and if I hadn’t chosen to believe, regardless of my emotional state, that God had a good purpose, I wouldn’t have made it.

Gradually, God brought people alongside who, though they could do nothing to solve my physical ailments, were a support system I desperately needed. He brought me healing emotionally and mentally in many, many ways through those people so that, even though He didn’t take away my physical thorn in the flesh, He did show His mercy, power, and love in my life. He grew my faith through the trial, and because of what I go through on a daily basis, He is able to reach people through me that He could never reach otherwise.

In the same way that He used what happened to my mother, and to me as a result, to help those suffering around me, He also used my illness to bring hope, encouragement, and joy to others in similar situations or to those who had family suffering the same way. My illness, as hard as it is to bear some days, is a living testimony to His goodness. I know. That sounds really weird. How can He be good if He lets me suffer?

I struggled with that question constantly at the beginning.

Until I realized, it isn’t about me. It’s about His glory and His honor. In His sovereign wisdom, He knew many things I didn’t about the results of this illness, and He knows there are many more things I will likely learn as the result of being sick. Could He miraculously heal me? Sure. Has He chosen to? In spite of my pleas at the beginning for that, no. And I’ve benefited more from seeing Him work in spite of my weakness than I ever would’ve if He’d healed me nearly six years ago so that I could go on to pursue everything I wanted to with no hindrances. My character has been forged in fire because of this illness. I’ve learned lessons I never would’ve without it. I’ve watched God humble me because of it, and I needed that. I needed to recognize my place and my purpose, and I couldn’t do that without this illness. My own pride would have prevented it.

So, God in His infinite wisdom gave me IBS. Do I still hope that someday it’ll go away? Yes. I worry sometimes about the future because I know an illness like mine will make being a mother and a good wife very difficult, and I hate that. I want a family, and I want to give them all of me and my attention. I can’t do that on days when my illness takes over and lays me out on the bed wishing I could just die in a hole somewhere because I’m in so much pain. My mind and my body aren’t capable of giving people around me my attention or my love in those instances, and I hate that. But I also know this. Someday, if God chooses to bless me with a husband and kids, He’s going to get me through it. He’s never, ever going to make me face a trial that He is not going to walk me through. Sure, He might give me a trial I can’t handle. But never one that He can’t handle or doesn’t intend to handle as long as I choose to give Him control and walk step-by-step with Him. It might be a rocky road sometimes, but what’s on the other side will be worth it in the end.