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Why Does God Want Some People to Have Bad Marriages?

 
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Post Why Does God Want Some People to Have Bad Marriages? Aaron Scott
Why does God want some people to be poor?

Why does God want some people to be sick?

Why does God want some people to be ugly?

Why does God want some people to be unintelligent?

Surely, this must be the case, right?
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7/11/19 3:40 pm


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Post Re: Why Does God Want Some People to Have Bad Marriages? Tom Sterbens
Aaron Scott wrote:
Why does God want some people to be poor?

Why does God want some people to be sick?

Why does God want some people to be ugly?

Why does God want some people to be unintelligent?

Surely, this must be the case, right?

You just lob them right across the plate...but neither I or NBF are going to take a swing.


...just walk away, Tom, just walk away...
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7/11/19 9:26 pm


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Post Re: Why Does God Want Some People to Have Bad Marriages? Cojak
Aaron Scott wrote:
Why does God want some people to be poor?

Why does God want some people to be sick?

Why does God want some people to be ugly?

Why does God want some people to be unintelligent?

Surely, this must be the case, right?


BEcause he LOVES ME! Cool
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7/11/19 10:31 pm


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Post Re: Why Does God Want Some People to Have Bad Marriages? Dave Dorsey
Tom Sterbens wrote:
You just lob them right across the plate...but neither I or NBF are going to take a swing.

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7/12/19 1:27 am


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Post Nature Boy Florida
Man, it must be tough for Aaron to look in the mirror in the morning.

(Sorry Tom - I slept on it and tried to resist - but couldn't hold back any longer)
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7/12/19 7:07 am


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Post Dave Dorsey
I saw the post before Tom did and was halfway through typing a reply, when I realized that the right thing to do would be to leave this one for NBF. [Insert Acts Pun Here]
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7/12/19 7:22 am


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Post Gentlemen, it IS a hard topic. Aaron Scott
I totally get why we don't want to discuss this. I can't figure it out either...unless the answer is just something I don't want to hear!

After all, we act like God is responsible--AND DON'T ACT LIKE WE DON'T!--when someone doesn't get healed. Apparently, we all have the faith to move mountains...so if someone doesn't get healed, THAT'S ON GOD, right?

I simply extrapolated from the notion that "God wants some people to be sick" to the OBVIOUS correlations that God must want some people to be poor, others to have bad marriages, etc.

You can be SURE that there have also been Christians who prayed over situations such as these things too. They perhaps prayed for a lost loved one to get saved, too.

Don't you think these things ought to be addressed if you are going to claim that God doesn't want to heal someone (and not just after they die)?

I have, over and over and over, admitted--abjectly admitted--that I do NOT have this level of faith (in fact, to my knowledge, I've only been able to pray in faith just a few times). BUT I ASPIRE TO IT! And I can find no reason why we act like it's God's divine will that someone be sick, rather than just maybe we don't have faith. Very simply, if it is sometimes God's will for people to be sick, then why wouldn't it sometimes be God's will for people to have bad marriages? deformities? handicaps?

Cessationist found a way to deal with it. They simply say such things don't happen anymore, unless God just, in His sovereignty, does it.

But Pentecostals have beliefs that should be called "Cessationism Lite." We believe God can heal, but I dare say that we barely have the statistical advantage (if any) over the healings that take place in cessationist churches.

I am not, nor have I ever been, WOF. I fully realize that just as you can't trust a six-year-old with a new car, there may be areas where God deals with us similarly. But what I can't understand is the great difference between what happened in Acts and the Gospels...and what is happening today.

Unless we have some explanation for this difference, why can't we just OWN that when people don't get healed, it is OUR faith (or THEIR faith) that is the issue?

Do you recall when the disciples couldn't cast out a devil? Jesus didn't say it was God's will for the boy to not be healed, but rather called into question THEIR faith...and then He healed the boy.

Why is it so hard to believe that we might be the issue? That though we pray with utter sincerity and hope and tears, it just might be that those things are not "faith"?

I want to be clear that I am writing this as much to me as to anyone. I grow weary of praying for miracles that don't come. At the same time, I must admit that I DO see answered prayers (for salvation, for healing, etc.) NOT in a miraculous sense, but in the sense of the widow woman who kept going to the unjust judge--i.e., we just keep on praying...and we DO see things happen.

Maybe THAT'S the answer, I don't know. But surely there are times when a miracle IS needed. I know that when you see someone withered away from chemotherapy, it is hard to have great faith that all of this will change.

I don't know the answer on this matter. And I see this as only a theological discussion, rather than some "gotcha" game. I want to know how we can seemingly compartmentalize our beliefs about faith and miracles in such a way that even real-world evidence doesn't cause us to rethink some things.l
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7/12/19 9:13 am


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Post Dave Dorsey
We live in a world that is broken and marred by sin. We are participants in this brokenness by nature and by choice.

God has restored this brokenness through the sacrifice of His son Jesus, and has inaugurated a renewed heaven and a renewed earth that will forever by the home of those who receive salvation in Christ by grace through faith.

We await the fulfillment of this restoration. Romans 8:18-39 succinctly answers your questions about our current state, what God in His mercy has done about it, and what is to come.

Your questions are answered by the gospel.
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7/12/19 11:07 am


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Post Nature Boy Florida
So if you want to take it even another step further - if you don't have enough faith - why didn't God make you so you did have enough faith?

And if it some spiritual calisthenics required to get you to that level of faith - why didn't he give you the fortitude to do those works to acquire enough faith?

Those beautiful people, with all the cars and the 3 expensive airplanes and endless health - why did God give them the right amount of faith - and not you?

Perhaps it isn't really faith after all. Perhaps faith isn't seen in the extravagance or health of a person - we've just twisted it to believe that is the outward sign of faith.
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7/12/19 11:15 am


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Post Dave Dorsey
Excellent observation, Mr. Nature Boy. There is a question behind each question until we get to a point where we must accept that we cannot know. The only thing we know for sure is that we can trust in the hope of the gospel for Christ to make all things right. [Insert Acts Pun Here]
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7/12/19 12:29 pm


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Post NBF... Aaron Scott
Nature Boy Florida wrote:
So if you want to take it even another step further - if you don't have enough faith - why didn't God make you so you did have enough faith?

And if it some spiritual calisthenics required to get you to that level of faith - why didn't he give you the fortitude to do those works to acquire enough faith?

Those beautiful people, with all the cars and the 3 expensive airplanes and endless health - why did God give them the right amount of faith - and not you?

Perhaps it isn't really faith after all. Perhaps faith isn't seen in the extravagance or health of a person - we've just twisted it to believe that is the outward sign of faith.




I am not making this statement about those who are extravagant or whatever. I am making it about matters of healing and the such, so please understand that my comments are NOT saying that a person with all of the bells and whistles has more faith....

It is MY belief that one reason we don't see more miracles is because most people do not really know what faith is. They are under the impression that faith is saying you believe something over and over...or affirming a Bible passage over and over...or praying "really hard"...or saying things with a lot of intensity.

The ONLY reason I know what faith is (assuming I actually do know) is because I linked answered prayers to how I felt/prayed for the answer. In other words, while I've prayed thousands of prayers, there were a few that I feel certain were absolutely effective. These were not those long-term prayers where we just pray until it happens, but prayers that I just "knew" had made contact...and this was soon confirmed.

People know the word "faith," but I am not sure they really understand faith. And I don't hardly know how to teach it myself. I recall many years ago, an old Church of God preacher was speaking about things like prophecy and the such, and he said something along the lines of "You'd never understand it in a million years." He wasn't saying that arrogantly, as if he was better than anyone else, but rather saying it to emphasize that he didn't know how to relate it.

Some years ago, reading Oral Roberts' autobiography, he said something that clicked with my own growing understanding of faith. He said that faith was "a knowing." Suddenly, I had the insight that I had needed to understand the difference between praying...and praying in faith.

I was able to (I think) make it a bit more clearer with the passage of time. Let's say you lost your car keys. You have looked everywhere you think they could possible by--TWICE! You have even looked in places where you know there is no way that the keys are there. The--suddenly!--you remember exactly where they are! More than that, you KNOW where they are!

Now,this is not empirical knowledge at this point. It is instead "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." That is, even though you can't see your keys, you have full "evidence" in your heart/mind/soul/spirit or what have you, that they ARE where you "know" them to be. It is a spiritual certainly, I suppose you could say.

Most people pray in HOPE. And so often God has answered our prayers just on that. But I believe there are SOME THINGS that come only if there is faith.

In one place, it says that "if we know that He has heard us, then we know we have our petition." I made a mistake on this in my teenage years. I assumed that--duh!--God ALWAYS heard us, so I was going to have my petition.

That didn't happen. A man died that I had prayed for, thinking I was praying in faith. I was very despondent. For a while there, I pondered if healing was really a thing anymore.

But then, when I had better learned about the knowing," I revisited that verse. And this time, I believe I caught the truth: "If we KNOW that He has heard us...." There is that "knowing" again! And in every single instance, to the best of my memory, when I have prayed or received with that "knowing' present, it has always been a matter of God doing the miraculous or the wonderful.

We teach faith as "really, really, really believing." But while I cannot be sure how to cause someone to have faith, I do think I have a little piece of understanding, perhaps, on how they can kind of tell if it is faith or not. AGAIN, of the billions of prayers that God has answered, I dare say that most of them were not this type of faith, but rather a beseeching, a desire, a imploring of God to help a situation, and God has responded so generously to such prayers. But I believe faith will bring us even more results.

Ask yourself this question: What is the difference between us and cessationists? Yes, we know about the difference in beliefs, but what is the net difference between OUTCOMES. That is, if we randomly take 50 people with terminal cancer and we pray for 25 of them, while the Baptists pray for other 25, does anyone think we will see all ours healed, while all of theirs are not healed?

And if there is no real difference (assuming that would be the case), then why are we acting like there is a difference? If the same result comes from being Pentecostal and being cessationist, we need to reevaluate, right?

All I know is that in the FEW instances where I was able to pray in such a way that I was COMMANDING things to change (and feeling heaven weigh in behind me!), IT HAPPENED! They may be small things to you, but it opened my eyes to the fact that there was more than what I had experienced.

And when I grasped something in faith, I GOT IT! (Some of you have heard how I received miraculous healing in, of all places, a SUNDAY SCHOOL CLASS!).

Don't be defensive. I'm not trying to play "gotcha." Just accept that perhaps, maybe, it might be that there is a way forward that gets more results.
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7/12/19 1:17 pm


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Post Nature Boy Florida
I still think you are trying to fit faith into a box that Oral Roberts set for you.

If you don't have faith, why didn't God give it to you?
Perhaps you do have faith, but something else is stopping your prayers from being answered.
Or perhaps you have faith, and getting the answer you want when you want it ISN'T God's plan. I know, you believe having enough faith guarantees instant healing because Jesus healed everyone that asked while He was here in the flesh on Earth. Perhaps that isn't so. Abraham left home to go to a city God promised him...yet he never got there. Sure, his descendants received it...but HE didn't. I wonder if he wondered why not?
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7/12/19 3:51 pm


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Post Cojak
I'll try this. I am enjoying this by the way. My daddy was a farmer in North Georgia before he became a preacher.. As a young man he hunted without a dog. It is called still hunting. You find a likely place for squirrels and simply sit and wait, 'being still'. He had taught me to still hunt.
I asked him once about faith, because I was having a problem in my head with faith. I had 'strained' for faith. I had prayed for faith. I had fasted for faith it eluded me.

Daddy said you remember when you were hunting. looking around you saw something, you just knew it was a squirrel. You stare, and ask your self did it move? finally you realize you are looking at a knot that 'looks like a squirrel'. Now remember when you saw a squirrel? there was no doubt, YOU KNEW IT WAS REAL, You aim, pull the trigger and you have it.

So all I can tell you son, after 45 plus years with the Lord,, one day, and it will not be many times, but one day when you are praying for someone or something, all of a sudden you will KNOW, I mean there is no doubt, you will KNOW!

I thought about that when Aaron said about the car keys, and I related that to what my daddy told me in N Georgia logic, "Don't get discouraged," he said, "It is real. but it is hard to explain."

Embarassed It is hard to put it into words.... Wink
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7/12/19 10:07 pm


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Post Cojak!!! Aaron Scott
Cojak wrote:
I'll try this. I am enjoying this by the way. My daddy was a farmer in North Georgia before he became a preacher.. As a young man he hunted without a dog. It is called still hunting. You find a likely place for squirrels and simply sit and wait, 'being still'. He had taught me to still hunt.
I asked him once about faith, because I was having a problem in my head with faith. I had 'strained' for faith. I had prayed for faith. I had fasted for faith it eluded me.

Daddy said you remember when you were hunting. looking around you saw something, you just knew it was a squirrel. You stare, and ask your self did it move? finally you realize you are looking at a knot that 'looks like a squirrel'. Now remember when you saw a squirrel? there was no doubt, YOU KNEW IT WAS REAL, You aim, pull the trigger and you have it.

So all I can tell you son, after 45 plus years with the Lord,, one day, and it will not be many times, but one day when you are praying for someone or something, all of a sudden you will KNOW, I mean there is no doubt, you will KNOW!

I thought about that when Aaron said about the car keys, and I related that to what my daddy told me in N Georgia logic, "Don't get discouraged," he said, "It is real. but it is hard to explain."

Embarassed It is hard to put it into words.... Wink




That's IT! And that's far better than I explained it. It IS like that. You will absolutely KNOW that something moved, something changed, something was done in the spiritual universe.

And it IS rare. Like I said, only a handful of times have I prayed in such a way that I KNEW.
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7/13/19 10:13 am


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