Anonymous (via GotQuestions)
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Danny Hickman
To trust in something is to submit your will to it. It isn't to hope in that thing for a desired outcome. It is to hold tight to your desired goals, and to at the same time, submit to "that thing" and its consequence. "That thing" has the juice.
What is this thing we refer to as our "will?" It is our desire, our wishes, aspirations. How do we relinquish it to something or to someone? We can be forced by mandate, but that isn't a true surrender.
That's the word for which I've been searching. Surrender! That is what we must do; but that only covers the "will" part of it. We still have to submit to the will of "the thing." Things don't have wills, persons do.
So we must forego our will and "trust" God's JUDGMENT! (There's another word we struggle to fully understand). It means, in this context, we must trust (willingly submit to) His decision in a matter. So by judgment I mean "decision." God's decision in a matter doesn't always align with His "will," His desires. For instance:
Peter writes that God is taking His time about sending Jesus back here for the final roundup; he says "God is not willing (desiring) that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance" (2 Pet 3:9).
That's not going to happen. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth (Lk 13:28, Mt 25:30, Mt 8:12, Mt 13,42, Mt 22:13, Mt 24:51, Mt 13:50). That's plenty of warning, I think...
So God's will and His decisions don't match. We must submit to (trust) His decisions about our life.
Danny Hickman
How do we "learn" to submit to God's decisions about us?
I think we do ourselves a favor by weighing our options and the evidence of God's character on the same scale. One option is to blindly go through life hoping to win whenever we're confronted with a major challenge. All we have in that option is our own thoughts in the matter. Or we can hope in God. Those are the only two options. What's left is to have no hope at all.
This is what I believe: I believe the chosen hope in the one who chose us (before the world was founded). I believe all others are left to live and die the death of sinners. The wages of sin is death; the gift of God is eternal life (Romans 6:33).
The people who are chosen for a relationship with the Lord in the here and now, and for eternal life in the kingdom of God, are chosen for it. It's a gift; the gift of life.
Here's the part that creates controversy: It's offered to everybody; nobody has the ability to accept it in his / her own volition. So unless God intervenes on behalf of the chosen, the chosen would also reject the offer. The whole thing is fair and just. Everybody dies; that's the penalty for sin. Nobody can say they were treated unfairly.
God has the authority to resurrect whomever He chooses.
Some women are barren; some men are born blind. God has the authority to heal whomever He chooses to heal.
If hell is a pit where lost souls LIVE for eternity that would be an injustice. It isn't. Lost souls die and are destroyed,
Danny Hickman
The good news is that the erroneous teaching of hell to be more than a grave won't keep anyone from repentance and eternal life in the kingdom of God. Evidently it serves a purpose for God. (So does Scientology and all the other ridiculous teachings about life here. I used Scientology because it's an easy target. If I had said one of the more respected false teachings, I'd lose what little credibility I would like to have. They all serve a purpose, and none of them can keep a child of God from repentance).
"Before the foundation of the world" speaks very loudly to those who have ears to hear. Those who have ears to hear were issued those ears by God. There's no other way to obtain them.
We can listen to preachers whoop and sing sermons for entertainment value, or listen to the ones who teach conservative political propaganda as gospel, or liberal points of view about compassionate behavior; none of that is worth fifteen minutes of sound doctrinal teaching about the grace of God, and His faithfulness to His word. God has told us His plan for a dying world. He provided a remnant for Himself;
I don't think the question is whether we can trust what He has said. I think it's whether His decisions about our earthly life can be trusted as being good toward us. Is He really in control?
If He isn't we might as well throw the bible away, because it teaches nothing other than God being in total control, even before the world was formed...
Typo in previous post: Rom 3:23...