Putting Together the Pieces for Panama

2007 is just about to give way to 2008 which will bring plenty of new opportunities. Each spring members from our church travel to Panama for a mission trip. Honestly its one of the best weeks of the year that leads to establishing new relationships enhancing existing ones.

I’ll be traveling to Panama mid-January to make arrangements and to get things set up for the group trip in March. It’s around this time of the year that I receive the most traffic on the blog because people are checking in for information and details. I’ll do my absolute best to update from Panama everyday with photos and thoughts on my travels to Central America.

Meanwhile back at the church our mission team is forming and preparing themselves for the trip. It is definitely a busy time as passports have to be ordered, airline reservations need to be made and mission activities need to be planned. Definitely wont be a slow start to the new year for us.

God and Evil

An over used argument against the belief in God is the existence of evil. People want to make the statement that if God was all powerful, all loving and all good then the presence of evil in the world show that God either isn’t all of those things or that He just doesn’t exists.

I have actually lost count on the number of times this case has been presented to me in an attempt to disprove God. It’s a flawed argument that defies logic. I recently received an email that contained some facts that help defend against this argument.

Did you know that there are different types of heat? You have heat, even more heat, super-heat, Mega-heat, unlimited heat, white heat, a little heat or no heat, but we don't have anything called 'cold'. We can reach temperatures of 458 degrees below zero, which is no heat, but we can't go any further after that. There is no such thing as cold; otherwise we would be able to go colder than the lowest -458 degrees. Every body or object is susceptible to study when it has or transmits energy, and heat is what makes a body or matter have or transmit energy. Absolute zero (-458 F) is the total absence of heat.

You see cold is only a word we use to describe the absence of heat. We cannot measure cold. Heat we can measure in thermal units because heat is energy. Cold is not the opposite of heat just the absence of it

Did you know that there is no such thing as darkness? Darkness is not something; it is the absence of something. You can have low light, normal light, bright light flashing light, but if you have no light constantly you have nothing and its called darkness, isn't it? That's the meaning we use to define the word. In reality, darkness isn't. If it were, you would be able to make darkness darker, wouldn't you?"

If you argue that there is life and then there's death; a good God and a bad God. You are viewing the concept of God as something finite, something we can measure. To view death as the opposite of life is to be ignorant of the fact that death cannot exist as a substantive thing. Death is not the opposite o f life, just the absence of it.

Evil does not exist, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of good and our standard of good does come from God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God.

God did not create evil. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God's love present in his heart. It's like the cold that comes when there is no heat or the darkness that comes when there is no light.

Nehemiah’s Wall Discovery Should Affirm Our Faith in the Bible

An archeological discovery made last week in Jerusalem adds validity to the accuracy of the bible should encourage Christians in their faith in the book that is the foundation for their religious beliefs.

The discovery of the wall that Nehemiah built is turning heads in Jerusalem and around the world, especially among those who argued that the wall never existed. There’s no way to deny it now but its discovery is of no value if we fail to recognize the significance of it.

Nehemiah teaches us to follow God’s desire for us despite the sacrifice, resistance and how impossible it may seem. Nehemiah left a position in the Persian government in order to motivate the Jewish people to go back and reconstruct the Jerusalem wall. Along the way he encountered complaining from his own people and threats from enemies. In the end the wall was rebuilt not by Nehemiah’s greatness but his allowing God to be active and work through him and his people.

We accept the bible by faith but evidence like this discovery reaffirms not only the truth of the stories found in God’s word but also the truth of who God is through those stories. It gives us confidence to continue to trust in God while living in a world that tries to deny His existence.

15 So the wall was completed on the twenty-fifth of Elul, in fifty-two days. 16 When all our enemies heard about this, all the surrounding nations were afraid and lost their self-confidence, because they realized that this work had been done with the help of our God. – Nehemiah 6:15,16

We all get spiritually run down at some point and there are times when we feel that God is not active in our lives. Those are all feelings that result from us straying away from God and not Him backing away from us. Like God’s call for the Jews to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the wall He also calls us back to Himself to rebuild or reestablish our relationship with him. For that to happen we’ll have to sacrifice the things that have hindered our spiritual growth, overcome resistance from friends, family and even ourselves to continue walking in the light of Christ.

Sometimes people may feel that it is impossible to find their way back to a loving God because of the way they have lived their lives. Remember that Nehemiah faced a task that seemed impossible as well but it was God’s power that allowed him to complete the rebuilding of that wall. Now we have actual physical evidence of it but you yourself can be the evidence of God’s power if you would just let Him work through you as Nehemiah did.