Living Alive

Jesus is love Alive. I believe that Christ is alive in our love for one another.

How’d you like to be an *answer* to someone else’s prayer?

Recently, I was eye-witness to prayer being answered (and quickly too). The phone rang & an unfamiliar voice asked me for help. He was out of a job, and she has medical bills piling up; their children are hungry today. I took his information and prayed for him. I made no promise of financial aid. The phone rang again. This was a familiar voice, a man in my church. He thought that maybe someone could use an extra financial gift. He was at my door within the hour. It wasn’t simply “money” that he gave; it was so much more than that. It was an answer to someone’s prayer. It was God providing for those in need. It was good stewardship.

It was Love Alive.

The Will of God
One of my favorite Bible passages, Romans 12:1-3, employs the phrase “the perfect will of God.” It’s a phrase worth pondering.
There is such a thing as the perfect will of God. We just don’t see it very clearly. Elsewhere Paul says: Now we see through a glass dimly, but then [in heaven] we shall see face to face.”
I wish I could figure it all out, now – to see face to face, clearly, in this life. But life is not that way. Life is not fair. Life is not good, at times. How can I explain it, especially when things are really bad for good people.
Sometimes it helps to think of things according to the will of God. Not that everything that happens is simply “the will of God.” To say that means that every single thing is pleasing to God. That’s just not the way the Bible describes life. Most of the Bible shows us examples of humans behaving badly. And God is not happy about that.
So, when we speak of the will of God, we may do better to describe several types of the will of God. Rev. Dr. Leslie Weatherhead (who lived last century) wrote a helpful little book called, “The Will of God.” In it, Weatherhead differentiates between the “Intentional”, the “Circumstantial” and the “Ultimate Will of God”. God’s intentional will refers to that which God intended from the beginning of creation. God’s circumstantial will is that which is affected by the fall of humanity and our freedom of choice. God’s ultimate will is that which succeeds regardless of the wrong that is done or the bad things that happen.
Weatherhead says plainly, “We simply must break from the idea that everything that happens is the will of God, [as if it’s God’s intention].”
I find comfort in knowing that God has a plan. But when I look at the circumstances of life, the tragedies and the evil in the world, I know that God wills better for us. There is an ultimate will, a perfect will of God, which one day will succeed.