Remember when you owned hardly anything? Life seemed a lot easier then. Parents paid the bills. Food magically appeared on the table. Clothes filled your closet. Then you got a job. You started buying your own things. You purchased your clothes.
Believe Series
It was the spring of 311. Constantine, with 40,000 soldiers behind him, made his way to Rome. His plan was to confront Maxentius whose army was four times the size of his own. That did not deter Constantine. In a vision in the afternoon sky he saw a bright cross with the words “By this sign conquer.”
You may not be the son or daughter of a terrorist, but you’ve been terrorized. You’ve been terrorized by an Accuser who tells you who you are. “You are not good enough, not smart enough, not pretty or handsome enough, not athletic enough, not successful enough.”
Doug Birdsall of the American Bible Society says that our relationship to the Bible is analogous to the problem of obesity in America. People realize they are overweight but won’t follow a diet.
There’s a story where Jesus is walking through a crowd of people. Luke says“…the people pressed around him.” The word for “pressed” means “to press round or throng one so as almost to suffocate him.” It wasn’t a place a claustrophobic would want to be.
Two big questions about God are these: is he great (all-powerful)
and is he good (all-loving)? One big issue causes us to doubt: the presence of suffering in our world. We think God is either great
but not good to allow suffering or that he is good but not great
enough to do anything about the suffering.