Word for the day by Christian Education Forum
Mission: to make Jesus known
“The fool says in his heart, “There is no God.”
How many of us really know God? A Lot of people claim they know Him. I myself sometime doubt that I know God, especially after seeing innocent children being harmed, people dying, people suffering for no known reason, and natural calamities that happen all around the world. Where is God and why is He doing this are natural questions for all believers and nonbelievers. Psalm 14:1 states that only a fool believes there is no God
What is knowing God? I believe that knowing God is trusting him unconditionally. When we experience trouble in life and also when we are blessed in many ways, we have to continue to trust in Him. Sometimes during turbulent times in our lives we pray and change our whole life to worship Jesus. When we see that God has listened to our plea and has provided a solution that we are content with, then many of us slowly start to forget Him. This is where we go wrong. God wants us to continue to pray and seek His guidance through both our good and bad times. Psalms 14:2 states that the Lord looks down from heaven to see if there are any who understand and seek God.
How do we know and trust Jesus? We can start by reading the bible and praying every day. Many of us do this in our lives but how about doing it as a family and not just praying by oneself. Our children learn from us. This statement is not some cliche - it is the actual truth. If we have children or have youngsters who look to us for guidance you will see in some ways they try to emulate us. This could be for better or worse. They sometimes do not have the knowledge of deciphering whether our actions are good or bad, but they try to be like us secretly. So what we do around those who look up to us as role models is very important. Once we have prayer in our family we will see lot of positive events come out of this simple change. Through prayer in our lives we can know Jesus. Once we start to understand Jesus we will trust Him unconditionally.
Why do we question everything that goes on in the world and try to blame God for it. We also try to question whether God exists or not, whether He is good or bad or that He just does not care of all. We may wonder why we have been given many challenges to overcome but our neighbors and other family members seem much happier without any hardship. This might be a time to accept that God has a plan for all and that plan may not be for us to understand now, but later these challenges that we had faced may reveal that it was for a greater good. Maybe someone else, through our experience, was able to seek our guidance and we helped them avoid certain choices they would had made. We don’t know who is going to benefit but surely there will be something positive that comes from all challenges.
Prayer: Heavenly Father, give us the wisdom to understand you and trust you unconditionally. We are all sinner in many ways but you along can help us to be a better person and help us to be role models for others. Amen
Thought for the day: How is our walk in our life with Jesus?
Theme of the week : Mission - to make Jesus known
Shibu. P Thomas, Staten Island MTC, NY