"Reasonable Reasons"

"Thou hast known my reproach, and my shame, and my dishonour: mine adversaries are all before Thee." (Psalms 69:19) As to the title of those last couple of days, we are bound to get it right sooner or later; after all, God is totally on our side; which is reason enough that we should always trust Him, even if it seems as though He is not listening to our cry for help. That is probably the most sought after answer we have, "Why is God not listening?" It is reasonable to assume that He is mad, or that He is letting us wallow around in our pity for a season; after all, we are sometimes very rebellious when it comes to listening to Him, so why should He listen to us? You can really get that assumption very easy by seeing how things worked out for Israel, going from blessed to cursed to blessed to cursed; it's hard to keep up with where they stood with God at any particular moment. But God does not change from moment to moment, or with every little change in our lives. Praise God! If I were to base my relationship with God on the way that I felt, my life would be a total wreck! My relationship with God is based upon Him, not me and my feelings; not me and my failures, but Him and His abundant mercy and grace for my life. That is what I meant by 1 John being a turning point for me, and why I believe that the letter must be understood completely, not just in sections. The Holy Spirit was speaking powerfully through John, giving us the complete picture of what we must believe, and how we must faithfully look to Christ and Him alone for any righteous qualities in our lives. We are flawed when it comes to being righteous, but in Christ we are made perfect, even though we are still imperfect people. And get this: the devil knows it, and it pisses him off! He hates the fact the we are redeemed from our sins, mostly because he is not; there is no redemption for the fallen angles, because they knew better. We that have been redeemed should know better also, but we still mess up from time to time; but that's the whole message, and why we need to look to Christ alone! Don't try and base your salvation upon your performance in being a Christian; if you do that, then you are going to drive yourself nuts. Base your salvation on the fact the Jesus Christ has paid the price for 'all' of your sins, and walk in that understanding; not in what you think that you know, but in what God has told you... "Since we believe human testimony, surely we can believe the greater testimony that comes from God. And God has testified about His Son. All who believe in the Son of God know in their hearts that this testimony is true. Those that don't believe this are actually calling God a liar because they don't believe what God has testified about His Son. And this is what God has testified: He has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. Whosoever has the Son has life; whosoever does not have God's Son does not have life. I have written this to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, so that you may know you have eternal life. And we are confident that He hears us whenever we ask for anything that pleases Him. And since we know He hears us when we make our requests, we also know that He will give us what we ask for." (1 John 5:9-12) NLT