Does God Care?
Does God Care?
By Ronald Graham
“No, the Father himself loves you because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God.” John 16:27.
Of course God loves all His children. The question we sometimes ask is who are God’s children? Those who are His enjoy an awesome relationship with Him. What God wants for each of His children is for them to understand His perfect will. But that can’t possibly happen if we are living a lifestyle that is contrary to what God’s word says. Why would anyone expect God to condone what His word specifically condemns?
Sometimes it seems as though Christians, when they read God’s word, aren’t convinced it’s God speaking to them. I imagine it’s because they don’t see God’s lips moving as they’re reading along. So they find His word, in many cases, to be unbelievable. “Just too tough to believe God actually breathed those words”. “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, (Greek word “theopneustos” meaning God breathed) and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness:” – 2 Timothy 3:16.
What God delights in is to see His children filled with the joy of the Lord, His joy. But many want a different joy, sinister, an evil; something God never intended His children to experience. The Bible gives us insight into God’s attributes and what He expects from those who’ve taken His name. But what we find is God’s word being ignored, even by many in the Church.
“It’s time to shelve the Bible. There are new and exciting alternatives to what people believe to be God’s word so we don’t really need that fuddy-duddy old book any more. It just doesn’t fit in our society. Our civilization has grown and advanced. That old book might have sufficed back in the stone age but it was certainly never meant for the 21st century.”
Here’s an excellent example of how the Bible is not taken seriously these days. Failed marriages in the Church are as commonplace as in the world. Many Christians today don’t know the word of God and don’t care to know it. The Bible makes it clear that God hates divorce. He hated it from the beginning when He created man and woman and He hated it when the “Word became flesh and dwelt among us” John 1:14. He hated divorce when the Apostles were preaching and teaching, and He hates it today.
Too many people today seem to think that God has lowered His standards. They have a “that was then and this is now” type of mentality. The truth is, these people are trying to conform God to man in order to justify their own sin. You may think I’m painting with a broad brush but it seems to me that Christians today are conforming to the world instead of to Christ.
The problem, as I see it, is many Christians have determined to ignore God’s word as it relates to certain areas of their lives. It’s as though they live in a dream world made up of their own ideas overlapping or superseding what God’s word says. Even many little “man invented quips” supersede God’s word, and become the norm. God’s word is relegated to a position of insignificance. That’s just pathetic.
People “think” they know God’s heart better than He does. They will makeup what they “feel” should be God’s response to certain circumstances that have arisen in their lives. They circumvent God’s word so their minds won’t be tortured with guilt. Many will go as far as to design their own personal god. They place their own feelings and ideas of right and wrong into the caricature of their personally designed god, in this way they’ve eliminated the restrictions and regulations of the one true God of the Bible. Although they believe their invented god is the God of the Bible He’s actually just a figment of their multimedia driven imaginations.
“If ye will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart, to give glory unto my name, saith the LORD of hosts, I will even send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings: yea, I have cursed them already, because ye do not lay it to heart.” Malachi 2:2.
God has been falsely and horribly portrayed through so many media outlets that people actually believe the many false representations portrayed as the god seen in the movies. We’ve all seen the different actor’s playing the part of God in movies and on TV sitcoms. Actors attempt to portray a version of God each adding his or her own entertaining perspectives on what they feel best represents God. Then, although it’s impossible for any human to ever play God and get it right, many people will accept their favorite actor’s portrayal of God. Morgan Freeman is a good actor but he shines a horrible light on the one true God.
People begin to pick and choose the god they want from what they’ve seen on the big screen. Some of those movie gods would let us get away with anything. These are the only kind of god’s people want when they wish to live a lifestyle that is contrary to the true words of the Creator God of the universe. In their minds they’re doing fine because their “self designed god” is behind them 100 percent.
My wife had an occasion to exchange emails with another believer who was convinced that God looked the way many different artists have portrayed Him over the years. Tragically, those paintings were all she had and all she knew as God. Let me ask you, did she really know God? Does the Sistine chapel actually display any likeness to God on its ceiling, or is that painting a figment of Michelangelo’s creative imagination?
Our minds can play some amazing games with how and what we believe. We can motivate our minds to accept anything we want so long as it corresponds with our desires. Our desires can be overpowering most of the time, and if we have little biblical knowledge to draw from there’s no limit to how far away from truth our desires will lead us. We’ve all seen the shipwrecks of people’s lives who thought they were sailing along pleasantly going about their business only to end up beaten and broken by the rocky, stormy seas along the shores of their lives. Their lives then become garbage heaps, full of pain and misery and they don’t understand why. Ultimately most blame the God of all creation for their misery. Why not blame the actor who deceived them by giving them their specially designed multimedia god?
Another example of how God’s word is ignored even in the Church can be attributed to the lust of the flesh. “For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other: so that ye cannot do the things that ye would.” Galatians 5:17. This is another huge problem that plays havoc with our minds. Old or young many today, because of the immorality shoved down their throats through what Hollywood calls entertainment, can no longer determine the difference between genuine love and lust. “But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.” James 1:14. So, many marriages end up in disaster even though they began with what the couple thought was love. Lust is never fulfilling; even when it is satisfied for a moment it’s never lasting and certainly is no substitute for true faithful love.
With faithful attentive love, our relationship with our spouse will have some great accompaniments. For example, along with our love and the togetherness we share there is also a fulfillment for the need of compassion, companionship, devotion, honor, trust and respect. These are all human desires that are fulfilled when we truly love our spouse. There must be a true desire to give of one’s self wholly to a spouse if a marriage is going to last a lifetime.
According to the one true God of the Bible, marriage between one man and one woman is the only sanctioned and acceptable marriage He will accept. Entered into correctly with the right motives marriage will last a lifetime.
You know and I know that much of what’s happening around this nation of ours stems from a direct result of the influence of secular humanism. From our government run public schools to the disasters in our Christian churches the evil influence flourishes. As rules are relaxed, morals are relaxed and what was an evil and untouchable taboo in decades past is now, among many, looked upon as quite normal.
Christians, through God’s word, are given guidelines to live by. Over time those guidelines have become less and less intrusive in the Christians life because, for many, they’re now looked upon as foolishness or they’ve given up on the Bible. “God’s rules are outdated and old fashioned and nobody lives that way today”. This is all because we’ve been re-programmed to accept what God says as unacceptable.
Also, many Christians see what they’ve been “missing out” on by watching television programming such as soap operas and late night movies which make sin look like fun. When the Bible says such things are sin and that we aren’t to condone or participate in activities that would be considered by God as sinful, then we must follow what the Bible says. Many of those sinful things we see the “world” obsessed with have begun to look very inviting. They’re better known as temptations, something Satan is very good at developing.
“There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.” 1 Corinthians 10:13.
This worldly influence invades our Churches and every corner of our lives. It’s just a lot easier to ignore some parts of the Bible so we can enjoy the simple pleasures the rest of the world enjoys. This way we can be happy and much more content in our Christian walk. It’s easy to ignore the Bible, just stop reading it. Oh, and we better find a church where the pastor knows how to tickle our ears because we certainly don’t want to be offended by him bringing up those old outdated taboos (sins). This shouldn’t be too difficult these days. “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Romans 6:23.
All that I’ve mentioned so far brings up a question asked frequently. “Why is it that God doesn’t seem to be very involved in my life? It seems to me that God just doesn’t care.”
Men and God have been at odds for thousands of years. Man, for the most part, just can’t get his mind around what God’s word says is the truth. Therefore man makes up his own truth, teaching that man’s truth is correct and God’s word is, well, fantasy.
Secular teaching in America has actually pitted man against God and has brought our nation to a point where our society is now made up of mostly unbelieving secular humanist devoted to man’s opinions. This kind of teaching is so prevalent that there now remains very few die hard believers devoted to God. Secular man looks at these die hard holdouts to God’s truth as strange, flat earth, morons completely devoid of common sense.
“These holdouts to our truth of evolution are killing this planet. They worship a nonexistent God, how can they possibly compare a nonexistent God to man’s intelligence? Where is their God? From the beginning of man’s existence they’ve been searching for some form of a god, so where is he?”
“Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.” – 2 Peter 3:3, 4.
Why doesn’t God care?
Many of my brethren disparage the Bible and wonder why God is seemingly ignoring them, their lives are a mess. And continually the question is asked, “Why doesn’t God intervene in my life? Why doesn’t God care?” “I don’t bother with the Bible in its entirety, for me it’s just the New Testament that has some relevant ideas. After all everyone knows the Bible was written by men.”
If you don’t take God’s word seriously and if you don’t believe the Bible in its entirety is God’s word, then your god is not the God of the Bible and you are relying on a false god to intervene in your life. Believers who don’t believe the book of Genesis which contains the creation explanation must also dismiss the book of Exodus and the fact that God wrote in stone using His own finger: “For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day he rested… And he gave unto Moses…two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God,” Exodus 31:17, 18. At this point those who misinterpret the book of Genesis must feel God has lied.
I will never understand my brethren who tell me that man has discovered the age of the earth to be billions of years old, even though they know God says He created the whole universe in six literal 24 hour days approximately 6000 years ago. Why do Christians believe man over God and then turn around and make the statement “God doesn’t care about me. If He did then why won’t he fix my messed up life?” To me it’s a no brainer. To God it’s a no brainer. When we oppose God in our personal lives and circumvent His word for man’s presuppositions there will be unpleasant consequences.
God will not be mocked. “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting,” Galatians 6:7, 8. All God asks of His Children is that we believe He is who He says He is and that we believe He speaks to us through His inerrant word. Isn’t it interesting that God only asks us to believe, but belief in man’s “discoveries” are demanded of us.
Christians claim to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ but how is that so if they continually mock God through their unbelief of the literality of His word? Are they not deceiving themselves? Who among us would ever call God a liar to His face? But isn’t that exactly what some are doing by placing what man has said above that of what God says. Think about it. Even if there is uncertainty in your mind, when it comes to a debate between what God says and what man says, it would benefit you greatly to always side with God. “Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory:” 1 Peter 1:8.
Believe God, you’ll be glad you did.
God bless you all,
Ron Graham
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All scripture is from the KJV