God Loves Charleston

On Wednesday the 17^th June, Dylan Roof, a 21-year old male walked into the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina and shot dead nine people who were attending a Bible Study in the church. Among the dead was the Reverend Clementa Pickney the church pastor and a state senator. Immediately after the killings, the usual questions and statements were asked and raised. “God’s dead”, “Is God alive?”, “If there’s a God, why didn’t he stop it?”, “Maybe God is not as powerful as they say he is”. Sigh!

The troubling thing is that Christians, even pastors have these thoughts and ask these questions. However while it’s okay to have these worries and doubts, the only way they can erase these doubts and answer these questions is only by going to God’s revealed word, the Bible. Psalm 115:16 says that “The heavens are the Lord’s heavens, but the earth has He given to the children of men.” John 4:24 goes further to say that “God is a Spirit and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” Hebrews 1:14 tells us that “Are not the angels all ministering spirits sent to minister to the heirs of salvation?” If we understand that God is a spirit and the angels and God live in the same place, then what these verses tell us is that the Heavens are for spirits while the earth is for humans.

The Bible makes us understand that we are spirits with a soul and we live in a body. With our spirits we connect with the heavens, God’s own or the devil’s own. With our souls we feel and express emotions. With our bodies we interact with the world around us. While we know that God is a spirit, the fact is that spirits are not legal in the earth. God is only legal in the earth through human agents in answer to the prayers of individuals. That is mainly how miracles happen. But the fact is that we live in a fallen world where crazy things happen because as the Bible says “The heart of man is desperately evil.”

Tragedies will happen. At times we will lose loved ones when we are not ready to let them go. Horrible things will happen in the world that will be broadcast on the news that will make us wonder: “Is God in control?” Yes he is. The Bible tells us that the earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. He owns the earth. Which then leads to the question, “Why did he let it happen?”, the answer to that is “He didn’t. He gave the earth to men. The evil in the hearts of men makes them commit heinous crimes. “Does that mean God is helpless?” No. God set the rules by which the earth runs. While he is God, he chooses to abide by the rules he has set to govern the world in that spirits are illegal in the earth. However because crazy things happen in the world, at times we fail to see or understand the love of God because of the bad things that happen. No matter how long we live on the earth, we will never have the answers to all the questions we have. We should however take comfort in the fact that he has promised to never leave nor forsake us. He also promises to comfort us when crazy things happen. That should comfort us in the midst of our troubles.

JC Cruz is the author of DECEPTIO published by WestBowPress, a division of Thomas Nelson publishers and LOST, BUT FOUND.

It's Not For Us To Wonder How

“How shall this thing be seeing that ….”

When Mary the mother of Jesus was told by the angel Gabriel that she was going to give birth to a child that would save the world from sin, she wondered how it was going to happen. She wanted to believe but to her there were several reasons why it was not going to happen. She was looking at the facts that would negate this promise of God. The normal process of life is that for a woman to get pregnant, she would normally have to have sex with the proposed father of the child. However here was God telling her that she didn’t need to be with any man to see the fulfilment of God’s promise to her. All she needed to do was to believe. God would make the rest possible by the power of the Holy Spirit.

In the book of Joel, specifically Chapter 2 verse 28, God promises to pour out his spirit upon all flesh and promises that his spirit will cause the opening of eyes so that men and women will see visions and dream dreams. We all have dreams and visions for our lives and there are some of us who think we need psychiatric help due to the dreams we have envisaged. Like Mary, we ask ourselves, “How shall this thing be?” We seem to be looking for one excuse or the other to let God know that the dream or vision he has impressed upon our hearts are just too impossible to accomplish. The fact is that even when we see dreams about what we are going to be, we want to understand the process. Our finite minds desperately try to grasp and understand how God is going to make it happen. But can I say that understanding how is not really our role.

The story is told in the book of 2 Kings 7 about a famine in the land of Israel. Elisha brought a word from God telling the king about what God was going to do in the land. However the king’s adviser scoffed. Elisha promised him he was going to see what God would do but he wasn’t going to partake of it. Somewhere else there were four lepers outside the gate of the city. They were impoverished men who had no hope. However they reached a decision about their future and they acted on that decision. God used their decision to bring deliverance both to them and their nation.

It’s really not our role to worry about things like how. Ours is to walk in obedience to the vision or dream God has given us. When we do that, the power of the promise keeping God will come to help us become all that he has called us to be. What vision or dream do we have or have we seen? Now is the time to act on it. 

JC Cruz is the author of DECEPTIO published by WestBowPress, a division of Thomas Nelson publishers, http://bookstore.westbowpress.com/Products/SKU000194087/Deceptio.aspx and LOST, BUT FOUND available at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DPLLEUQ/. You can follow him on Twitter @Cruz_JCReal.  

No Fear

I remember reading about the Pope's Christmas message. According to him, Christian's needed to live their lives free of fear. As I read about the message, it occurred to me that it was something all Christians needed to take to heart.

A new year is here and we have made resolutions, we dreams and hopes for the new year yet before we've even started on the path to seeing the achievement of those things we long for, we are already crippled by fear. Our fear causes us to make excuses as to why we shouldn't even try walking down that path. Then of course there us the fear of failure. Apart from being afraid of not achieving what we set out to do, we are worried about how people will laugh when we try, fail and fall flat on our faces. We are afraid of people's opinions.

Okay, can we come to a stop right there? With all those thoughts going through our minds, it's obvious as to why the Bible says that dear has torment. We are tormented by the thoughts of things that might never happen. Jesus has promised that no matter what happens, he will be with us. We need to keep the thought constantly at the front of our minds that not only is he with us, he is for us. We need to take him at his word.

The Bible says that God has not given us the spirit of fear but of power, love and of a sound mind. Therefore fear is not only not from God, it is not of God. The question what if is not only a negative one as we like to think. It could also be a positive one. So instead of thinking "What if I fail?" wouldn't be better if we thought "What if I try and I succeed?"

The year us just beginning and it has the potential of being the best year of our lives yet. But it's not going to happen that way just because we think it. We need to act so that it can be. For that to happen we need to live unafraid. We need to stop letting fear write the story of our lives. That's God's job. And so my friends, as I go on my journey to find those things that I was meant to do and be, I ask that you go with me on the journey, even as we both go with God.

I Believe

The general rule is that I’m too much of as tough guy to cry while watching a film. But I must confess that there are exceptions to this rule. One of those exceptions is the The Champ. I think you must be a heartless individual without any hope of redemption not to cry as the little boy (or is it a girl?) keeps on shaking the lifeless body of the dead father, uttering those heart rending words “Wake up champ.”. The next film that loosens my tear ducts is Quo Vadis. Courage Under Fire and Gladiator come close but they don’t really open the ducts.

For those who don’t know, Quo Vadis is the fictionalized account of true events. The story of the film is that of a popular Roman general who falls in love with a Christian girl. Their story is told with that of the persecution of Christians who were being thrown to the lions in the arenas as backdrop. The events of the film are supposedly quite a few years after the death of Christ. By this time, Peter is a blind and old. The early church has decided to secret Peter away. He is led out of the city gates of Rome by a young boy just before they are to close. Nero has blamed the Christians for the fire that burnt down Rome and they are all being apprehended. Just as Peter is about to escape, he sees a vision of Jesus Christ. Jesus tells him “Peter, I must go back to Rome to be crucified a second time.” Peter understands that Jesus is talking about him. He turns back and walks back through the gates to a certain death fulfilling Christ’s prophecy about his latter years. According to Church history, he asked to be crucified upside down because he felt unworthy to die the same way Jesus died. People say they want see Paul when we all get together in heaven. I want to see Peter.

The early church was extremely lucky to have people like Peter and Paul, men of great whose shadow according to reports healed people. These were people who received revelations of heaven, walked on water, raised the dead, healed people, saw the future including the end of the earth. These were spiritual giants, men to whom God told his secrets to. If we were to include them in the heroes of faith described in Hebrews 11, I would say that they were men and women of whom the world was not worthy. However, I must say that I have recently begun to marvel at the intellectual arrogance and feeling of superiority of the 21^st century Christian. Due to an increase in “knowledge” which feeds our souls instead of our spirits, we now feel we know more than the fathers of faith. We feel that we of the 21^st century have more “information” than the early church fathers and so we can ignore whatever they say. We think their words are advisory and to be ignored. We think the words are not relevant for the times we live in.

I believe in God, the creator of the heavens and earth and he dwells in Heaven. I believe Jesus Christ is the only begotten of the Father who in obedience to what the Father wanted, came to the earth to show us the way back to the Father. I believe that when Jesus Christ ascended, the Holy Spirit was sent to us to guide us in our honest search for truth. I believe the Holy Spirit lives in hearts of all believers and He is work is to help us fulfil the reason why God put us on the earth. I believe that Jesus is coming back again and that we will reign with him in his government that he will set up in the earth. I believe the Bible is the infallible Word of God inspired by the Holy Spirit and that the words are relevant for today and tomorrow. I believe.  

JC Cruz is the author of DECEPTIO, a thriller about the persecution of Christians. DECEPTIO is published by WestBow Press, a division of Thomas Nelson Publishers. DECEPTIO is available here http://bookstore.westbowpress.com/Products/SKU-000194087/Deceptio.aspx. He's also the author of LOST, BUT FOUND, a story of love and redemption, available here http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DPLLEUQ.