This article. Please don’t start reading it unless you commit to finish reading it all, and, above all, do as instructed. Thanks.
Also, I encourage you to use it as it might help you convey its Truth to your family or friends or Sunday School Class or whomever, but it is in the pre-copyright process, so please keep my name with it as author, as I am.
These negative thoughts and opinions that follow below are held by many people these days, and we ourselves are at times tempted to share them. Please read carefully and thoughtfully.
+• God is not powerful and cannot be trusted.
+• It is so not true that
+• God lives and loves us and gives us hope.
+• Our experiences in life make it so clear that
+• God is distant and absent from us.
+• There is no way we could believe that
+• God is good and God is on our side.
+• The hope we have amidst all the crises of our time is that
+• We can make it through on our own strength.
+• It is simply a lie that
+• God wants a relationship with each of us and all of us.
+• The best part of human existence is that
+• We have the human capacity to control our ultimate destiny.
+• And the lie is that
+• God has authority over us and ultimately over everything.
+• The Truth is that
+• Financial security is our true security.
+• So often we are tricked into believing that
+• Jesus’ Love for us is the most dominant force in the universe.
+• What is really true is that
+• Politicians and government should be able to supply all our needs.
+• We don’t really believe that
+• God is “Mighty To Save” and wants to save me.
+• The one constant truth in all of life is that
+• It’s me against the world … us against them.
+• There’s no way that
+• I have a personal savior who knows my name and loves me.
+• I am convinced that
+• The world is a forsaken place and there is no solution.
+• It is foolish to presume that
+• There is hope!
As I said, many people believe this as their negative reality, and we, too, are tempted at times to think about our world and our lives this way.
However, and this is a huge “However,” what is written above, as you read it, is absolutely not the truth and not the true reality of our lives. It’s not even close.
What is true and the true positive reality of our lives is the bold Good News of the Biblical writers, that God’s power in Jesus through His Holy Spirit reverses, yes reverses, everything. God even ultimately reverses death to life.
In John 11:25-26, we hear Jesus declare His reversal from death to life. Jesus said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in Me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who believes in Me, though he die, yet shall he live.”
In Ephesians 3:20, we hear St. Paul declare and celebrate the sovereign power of God. “Now to Him who is able to do far more than all that we ask or think, according to the power (of the Holy Spirit) at work in us, to Him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen”
Now. Now. Now read The Truth. Go back up to the line, “There is hope!” Read that line with faith and conviction and proceed to read up (yes, read up) the page, “from bottom to top,” in reverse order, yes reverse order, of the full lines you read before. Then you will know The Truth, which begins with “There is hope!”
[Kollmeyer, a Fayette County resident for 35 years, is Pastor Emeritus at Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Fayetteville. Follow Pastor Scott Ness and this great church at www.princeofpeacefayette.org. Kollmeyer is also Interim Pastor at Word of God Lutheran Church in Sharpsburg. Find his weekly video recorded sermons at www.woglutheran.org.]
