The Cross is Still the Answer

The greatest witness for God on the earth is His people. The worst witness for God on the earth is His people!

When we stop trying to put our trust in people, even His people, and learn to keep it in Him, we will find the only foundation that can stand the test of time and age is Jesus Himself.
When we begin to walk in humility, which does not care what people think but rather what God thinks, and we are willing to associate with the lowly and be counted among His people with all of their flaws, including ours…we are on our way to the definitive reality of true life, which is the God kind of love.

Of late TV channels have been bashing the Church, the preachers and the very tenets of Christianity. The air-waves are filled with atheists, philosophers, sadhus and so called ‘saints’ bad-mouthing the Bible and openly declaring the ‘dangerous’ teachings flowing out of it. The more you watch, the more discouraged you can get. The clips repeat themselves again and again during the whole show…subliminally programming you to believe what they say is true indeed.

The real bashing today is on healing ministries. Tomorrow it will turn to us…the ordinary believer at home, the Christian businessman, the Bible carrying college student, the praying house-hold servant.

I have something to say.

God can do anything He wants, but He has chosen to work through ‘earthen vessels.’ In Psalm 115:16, the Bible says, “The heavens are the heavens of the Lord, but the earth He has given to the sons of men.” This is why He will not do things on the earth until we pray. That is what I am saying…Pray!

He has delegated the rule over the earth to men. Even in Revelation 3:20, He stands at the door of His own church and knocks to see if any will open to Him! In this age, we must want Him, and we must open to Him before He will enter into our time and circumstances.

A recent poll was taken by the Barna Group in the US in which the question was asked, “If you could ask God one question and know that you would receive an answer, what would you ask?”

The most common response was, “Why is there pain and suffering in the world?”
C. S. Lewis observed that the problem of pain is atheism’s most effective weapon against the Christian faith. Whenever there is tragedy or trauma, the first question that hits us is ‘why?’ Why would God allow such a thing to happen? Earthquakes…Cancers…Accidents…Death?

We ask this because our human thinking and ideas of fairness reject the apparent contradiction between a God of love and the real world of pain we see around us. So the general tendency is to blame God!

Do you really know that in a broad sense, all pain, sickness and death are the result of sin and curse? Not personal sin in particular…but of sin in general. God’s original plan was for us to live life to the fullest forever in a perfect state and environment. But the truth is that Adam and Eve disobeyed in God’s perfect environment. As a result sin came into the human race and we all inherit it since birth!

We are not basically good as some want to believe. Rom 3:23, says, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”. We cannot achieve God’s standards on our own; therefore we need Him more than ever. Neither did God create us as robots so we can be programmed by Him to do all the right things.

Well, God did not make us that way. He gave us the ability to choose. A very similar question was asked of Jesus. Apparently a tower had fallen on a group of Gentiles, and some were suggesting that it happened because it was God’s judgment. But Jesus said, “Were they the worst sinners in Jerusalem? No, and I tell you again that unless you repent, you will perish, too” (Luke 13:4–5).

People die. Bad things happen. We don’t always have to say that it was God’s judgment. This happened, and it doesn’t always make sense. But listen. You had better get ready, because you could die, too. Death has great statistics…one out of one person will eventually die!

So the answer remains the same. Whether spoken by an evangelist on a stage or someone sharing their faith with another. We must turn to Jesus and the Cross! He was fully God and fully man. His suffering was real. He felt pain just like you and me. Real blood pumped through His veins and fell to the ground. He hung on the cross and actually died for the sins of the whole world. He became curse for us that we might walk away healed and free. The rejection and loneliness He felt from His own Father and from His own handpicked disciples was really real.

But He rose again on the third day, appearing to thousands in and around Jerusalem. Eating with his disciples and challenging them to preach the glorious Gospel. And Jesus is definitely coming back with Glory to be worshipped eternally.

Let everyone say what they will.

The cross of Jesus will always remain the eternal answer to all us needy men!

Willie Soans