"unLearning
Life"
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Mike Slaughter
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 I
missed you last Saturday evening. I was with Pastor Wayne Cordeiro at
New Hope Church in Honolulu. Some of you remember when he spoke here
a year ago last summer. We saw 200+ folks find new life in Jesus last
weekend. Last Sunday afternoon we baptized 273 people in the ocean.
I was there Sunday morning when I got in touch with Carolyn and she
told me the bombing in Afghanistan had begun. Since September 11, we
have been on a journey of unlearning life. Todd Beamer who was on Flight
93 - the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania - represents so many of
the people who have died in this tragedy. A dad with two young kids
and a pregnant wife. Warren Bird, with whom I write books with ministry,
is here this weekend. Todd was a member of Warren's church in New Jersey
and was a Sunday school teacher. You say, "I know a lot of slugs. If
evil has to take out somebody, why good people?" We all are dealing
with the after effects. I saw someone from our church at the airport,
a single dad with two kids, who works for an airline. He said, "I'm
probably going to get laid off this week." Why? Then from the Troy community,
two of my friends, Bob and Shirley Davies, died this weekend in a private
plane crash. I worked with Shirley on the Board of United Seminary.
How do you make sense of all this tragedy? It's really about the oldest
question in the Bible. Why do bad things happen to good people? |
Job 1:1
1: In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name
was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned
evil. |
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The
oldest book in the Bible is the book of Job and the whole book is about
that question. Here is the very first line from the book of Job, "This
man was blameless and upright. He feared God and shunned evil." Yet
he went through a whole series of catastrophic events and lost everything.
He lost his wealth, he lost his health, and he lost his family. We're
here asking the same question - I feel this pain all across America
- why does God allow bad things to happen to people? We are going to
be unlearning that life is supposed to be fair. |
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Job 27:2
2: "As surely as God lives, who has denied me
justice, the Almighty, who has made me taste bitterness of soul,..." |
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 Will
you open your Bibles to Chapter 27 in the book of Job in the Old Testament?
Somehow I feel that faith plus integrity should insure the absence of
injustice or tragedy. Faith is not a magic formula against the consequences
of life. In verse two, Job was speaking to his friends. He said, "As
surely God lives . . ." Now that is a statement of faith. God lives
and he calls God the Almighty, which means the All Powerful. "God lives.
God is good but he has denied me justice.  The
Almighty who has all the power in the universe has made me taste bitterness
of soul." Life isn't fair. Faith is not a magic formula against the
consequences of life. The Bible is filled with accounts of people like
Joseph. Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers. Joseph kept his
integrity and remained faithful to God. He became a manager of one of
the premier estates in Egypt. His boss's wife came on to him, but he
kept his integrity. She lied and he went to prison. What is that about?
Life isn't fair.
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