The world is in so much pain and chaos right now and it’s been really weighing heavy on my heart.
Last night April 27th, 2024 my home state of Oklahoma was hit hard with deadly tornadoes. My heart hurts so much for the families that have lost loved ones and for the people that have lost so much during these storms.
To all who have experienced loss in whatever way during these storms my heart goes out to you. To anyone who is going through suffering in the world right now, I am interceding for you in prayer. To anyone who has a prayer request, I am here to cover you in prayer. Please don’t hesitate to send me your prayer request so I can intercede for you in prayer. Even annonoumous prayers. God knows our needs and the details. You can send me your prayer request here.
It’s easy to think that God is good when everything is going well. It’s not quite as easy to think that God is good when things are going bad and I get it, I validate anyone who may be experiencing a lack of faith in God right now. It makes perfect sense why you would be doubting your faith and the goodness of God. I know that the enemy of our souls wants us to be upset and angry at God and to doubt his goodness because again would it not only make sense that if God is good then things have to be good every moment of the day? I remember that this is how I used to look at it. This was my perspective, but it was a harmful perspective because it made me back away from God and look at him as the author of suffering in the world. I now know that God is not the author of confusion and disorder but the author of peace.
At the beginning of the creation of the world, all was good. There was no taint of chaos and woe that now plagues the world. God created the world from the essence of who he is which is love. God can’t be anything but love because God changes not, he’s the same yesterday, today and forever. Malachi 3:6 ; Hebrews 13:8
When mankind was eating from the Tree of Life they had the Peaceable fruit of righteousness in their lives which comes from the foundation of love. God is a god of order and peace, and not disorder.
In Revelation, it says he will wipe away every tear from our eyes and there shall be no more death, sorrow, crying, and pain: for the former things are passed away. Revelation 21:4
The enemy of our souls is the one responsible for all the pain and chaos in the world.
God is a god of Truth and he will not sustain a lie. If he were to sustain a lie or any evil then he wouldn’t be God of love and truth. Eternal life is eternal because it’s based on truth which is eternal. All the decay and destruction we see in the world is the result of transgression, being out of Harmony of God’s will.
God does not arbitrarily send plagues on the Earth but he will allow it as a natural consequence of transgression because again he will not sustain a lie. It pains me to see people believe that God arbitrarily sends destruction on the Earth making people think that he’s responsible for chaos on Earth. He does not arbitrarily send it but he will allow it because he cannot and will not sustain a lie. Too not everything that we suffer individually is because we are transgressing against God. Because of the law of entanglement and interdependence, we can suffer at the hands of other people’s choices and sometimes we never realize just how far the consequences of our choices will go and how much harm it will cause.
God created the world to live by the law of love which is the law of interdependence, unity in diversity. Everything in nature lives not for its own but gives to life. The ecosystems of nature testify to this truth. Everything in life is diverse and complementary for all of nature was created to be a reflection of the Godhead.
Genesis says “let us make man in our image male and female he created them.” If you think about this, is this saying that God is both male and female? No, what it’s showing is that each person of the Godhead is different but complementary working together and serving in the spirit of love. Just as husband and wife are different but complementary they bring wholeness in their union. Their differences bring strength though sometimes can bring disorder when one chooses to live selfishly and not appreciate each other’s diversity understanding that their diversity is God-ordained and brings strength and wholeness into the relationship.
Sometimes people can be very egocentric and look at differences as something to be threatened by, but God created us to appreciate our differences and see how they bring strength to relationships and the world as a whole.
I find it funny that a great deal of conflict in marriages comes from the fact that our brains are wired differently. There’s a really good book I highly recommend authored by Caroline Leaf, Who switched off your brain? Solving the mystery of he said/she said. It’s enlightening and humorous and helps us to understand the male and female brain and how they’re different, but God ordained.
I feel that when husband and wife come together and appreciate their differences and understand that their differences are god-given to bring wholeness and strength, the couple can become a power couple and see conflict as an opportunity to practice unity in diversity being one just as the Godhead is one in their diversity and helps prevent power struggles that come along with our selfish egocentric human nature.
Marriage is schooling to prepare us for heaven. It teaches us to live together in unity being one amid our diversity, learning to appreciate each other’s differences.
Jesus’s last prayer was that His disciples would be one just as the Godhead are one so the world would believe.
At Pentecost, it was a reversal of the event at the Tower of Babylon. Jesus commanded his disciples to preach the gospel, the kingdom of God, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
This takes us back to Genesis when God said we were created in His image male and female. This is God’s will, for us to be like the Godhead living in unity amid our diversity bringing peace to the world, and manifesting the law of love which at its core is interdependence, healthy, mature and selfless love
At the Tower of Babel, the people were rebelling against God’s commandment to disperse and diversify and instead were living in uniformity.
In Genesis God said “Let Us” revealing God’s will but at the Tower of Babel, they said Let Us” revealing that they were unifying in rebellion against God’s will and were focused more on uniformity versus unity in diversity.
Going back to the ecosystems of the world I think of the plagues during the Exodus with Pharaoh in Egypt and how the ecosystem became out of order which brought about a reversal of creation. For example, the water turns to blood. This could be that the water had an algae problem or it could have been real blood we don’t know, but whatever it was the amphibians started to die because the water quality was marred and because the amphibians died there became an overabundance of gnats, and fleas. When the ecosystems in nature are not working as God created them the whole world becomes disorderly.
God truly created all things in His image of love which is unity in diversity and not living unto your own but selflessly living out the purpose that God created you to live, serving to bring wholeness and order in the world.
When one part of the ecosystem is out of balance it affects everything in nature. The increase in natural disasters is a manifestation of this reality and the enemy of our souls wants us to blame God for the disorder and destruction in the world when he is not he author of confusion and disorder. God’s ways are the ways of order and peace, Satan’s ways are the ways of chaos disorder, and suffering.
Though we do not get to escape unscathed in in this world for we live in the reality of the natural consequences of confusion and disorder, God promises to bring good out of all bad.
Though it may not look like it if God were to remove the veil and show us the big picture and exactly how he can use all things for good, we would see that God will always checkmate the enemy and bring good out of evil for God is good and I stand on the truth that God is good no matter how much the enemy seeks to try to break our trust with God and His goodness and believe me I don’t say this stoically, I say it with the truth and confession that I have moments when I can doubt the goodness of God. I too can have my faith rattled, but then I ask God to quiet my soul and calm his child amid the storm and I see that God may not always calm the storm but he will calm his child in the storm and bring me true peace, the peace that not comes not from there being a lack of external chaos with me trying to control external circumstances but the peace that comes from Christ ruling in My Heart which enables me to have peace no matter the circumstance. The very peace Jesus had when he was sleeping peacefully in the boat amid the raging storm because he knew that his heavenly father was with him and working all things out for good.
While we may not understand why things happen as they do, we can trust that God is good even in the midst of Life’s storms. A God who can selflessly give his only son to die for us, and Jesus who freely laid his life down for us is a God you can most certainly trust! Complete selfless love like this reveals one can be trusted!
Isaiah 49:16 “Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands: they walls are continually before me.”
When you start to doubt the goodness of God just look and live by redirecting your focus from the storm and fix your attention on Jesus who is the author and finisher of your faith, and by beholding his love this will strengthen you and bring you peace and resilience amid life’s storms for love and fear cannot coexist at the same time!
This isn’t saying to ignore your problems and stick your head in the sand like you don’t have any problems, but this is to give peace and resilience amid adversity strengthening your weary soul so no matter what’s going on externally you can have peace internally. This is true peace and this is the peace that surpasses all understanding.
Take heart my friends. Jesus said: “in the world, you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer for I have overcome the world.”
No matter what you’re going through, God is working all things out for our good, because he is the God of good and promises to work all things out for our ultimate good. God will always give back double for our trouble and set us on the firm foundation of his goodness and covenant faithfulness.
I linked a video below to cleanse your mind of any anxiety that the enemy may be oppressing you with, for “faith comes by hearing and hearing through the word of God.” Romans 10:17
With much love, your sister in Christ – Jennifer