Sent to try us!

Sent to try us!

A familiar example is Abraham’s trial when he was ordered to sacrifice Isaac. At this moment I am concerned with the obvious question, ‘If God is omniscient he must have known what Abraham would do, without any experiment, why, then, this needless torture?’ But as St Augustine points out, whatever God knows, Abraham at any rate did not know that his obedience could endure such a command until the event taught him; and the obedience which he did not know that he would choose, he cannot be said to have chosen. The reality of Abraham’s obedience was the act itself, and what God knew in knowing that Abraham ‘would obey’ was Abraham’s actual obedience on that mountain top at that moment.

To say that… ‘God need not have tried the experiment’ is to say that because God knows, the thing known by God need not exist.”   

C.S. Lewis – ‘The problem of pain’ 

  
A bit ‘Matrix-esque’ yes? But do you get this? If not read it again, and again!

Whether God knows or doesn’t know is not the issue. The issue is only in us obeying and in that ‘act’ (obedience) do we transcend our current character, the environment or circumstance and further transformed into the ‘image of His Son’ –(Ephesians 4:13) Men and women of a faith that continue to please God. (Hebrew 11:6) 

I share this with your because I want you to be ready to walk forward in whatever 'life' appears to throw at you - the supposed 'good, bad and ugly'.

So many individual ‘faiths’ are shipwrecked on a poor understanding that our Heavenly Father wants to make us whole and complete in Him, not necessarily comfortable or 'happy'.

Beloved, fix your gaze on this truth. I want to be whole and it is in Christ and conforming to His image that this will happen. Don’t let anything, big or small, grand or mean keep you form this. It will help you stand when many fall.                                                                                                  S.W. Varcoe