Life is complicated due to sin bringing death, but that answer does not always satisfy. I get it! It sounds hackney. A throw-away answer in the middle of trouble and pain when there are no real good words to bring comfort. Yet, it is a part of the answer for many painful situations. It’s the tails on the coin of God is Lord (heads) of heaven (transcendent) and earth (imminent).
How are those two sides of one coin? Nothing is equal to God, so I speak figuratively. He loves us and wants us to choose him back. We almost every time choose autonomy, our way. Those ways lead to death. We experience pain and look for ways out of it.
Some choices are drugs, sex, money, and things not meant to bring true comfort, only superficial. Those things are abused to militate a numbing of our pain. Instead, running to them only adds to our pain. Those are harsh slave masters. They drive you to more and more of an appetite while leaving you empty.
Understanding trouble and pain biblically and that it is a promised part of life is the tail of the coin because we will act more wisely as we encounter what sin has brought into the world. The head part of pain is understanding who God is, what He has promised, how repentance can heal, and understanding that a fallen world brings suffering if sin is not involved.
Keeping the heads part up when pain, agony, trouble, and sad circumstances happen will help you remember:
In our pain, God waits to heal.
In our sickness, God waits to comfort us.
In our loss, God waits to make himself known.
Our world is converging to the end of what it is today. While we are here, the side of the coin is sin and death that has already been defeated in Jesus; we are still experiencing it. It will be done away with when God’s full plan to set up a new heaven and earth is brought to fruition. While here, we get to choose between serving God or serving the depravity that is antithetical to faith. To whom will you offer your pain? Like, Bob Dylan sang, 🎵 “you’re gonna serve somebody.” 🎵 why not choose the one in heaven, above the pain, yet intimately involved because he loves those who know Him through His Son?
All other gods are hard taskmasters; sex brings diseases; drugs kill our organs; the love of money leads to all kinds of evil. God brings peace through this mendacious experience on earth if you belong to him. God gives joy when life is most difficult, in a loss.
If you are reading this, you have a choice. Continue living the side of the coin that perpetuates misery, death, and that death outside the presence of God. That is misery and then misery again. We all experience the effects of sin and death. That doesn’t need to be experienced alone. Flip the life coin over and live with God in His Son. Sin and death have already been chosen for us. We were born. Simple as that. How we go through life, experiencing all its trials and effects, is a choice we can make. I remember God goes with me and his grace is available. Though the tails part of the coin will exist on this side of heaven, it will not be the side I call. I always call "heads!"
I remember exactly the emotions I experienced when I received the news that my son was dead. I recognized the tails of that situation; death is in the world through sin. There are no promises that parents will die before their children. I decided to turn the coin of that pain over to heads and remind myself I know The One Who Comforts. God made his presence known in a real and tangible way. It was unexplainable.
Jesus said, “I have told you these things so that you will have peace (the heads side of the coin). In this world, you WILL HAVE trouble (that’s the tails side). Take heart, I have overcome the world (the head side again). God will not be outmatched. Of that, we can be certain.
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