Chris' Christian Blog

March 21, 2017

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The March 21, 20017 prompmt for the 30 DBC is: "Rank your favorite fruit flavors- let's limit them to a Top 10 or Top 5 list- and then defend your picks in the comments *Laugh*. (Anyone listing feijoa in their entry is getting banned from future 30DBC rounds! *Smirk*)"

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ell let's see then my first favorite five favorite flavors would have to be the unmentionable feijoa. Then I'd have to go with chocolate for my next choice. Chocolate has a ton of benefits as well. For one thing it is a good source of energy. In fact if you ever had the displeasure of eating a military C-ration you will remember that at the bottom of every rat there was a small bar of chocolate for desert. That chocolate won many a soldier the hearts of the children in war zones. Chocolate gives tons of energy very quickly and in combat it's needed.

My second favorite flavor would have to be strawberry. That's one of the reasons my favorite ice cream is Neapolitan. Chocolate is my favorite flavor and strawberry is my second favorite. it of course has them both.

I hate to sound like a broken record here but my third favorite flavor is the third flavor of Neapolitan. It of course is vanilla. Give me a bowl of Neapolitan ice cream and I'm in hog heaven. Unfortunately I can't eat any of my favorite flavors right now because I'm on a diet and most of them are only found in sweets.

My fourth favorite flavor is one I actually am allowed to have in limited quantities. That is just about any type of meat. I have no qualms with vegetarians but I love meat. I'm not suppose to eat a lot of red meats or sea food because a chemical in them causes gout but I still love meat!

My fifth favorite flavor is caramel. Again it's great for it's energy benefits but it isn't so great around the waist line!



The Blogging Circle of Friends prompt for Tuesday march 21, 2017 is "It's kind of like writing in your morning pages or your journal Take 10 minutes to write a stream of thoughts. Try to write constantly during the 10 minute period and do not edit as you write."

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have to be the first to say that this prompt is a bit confusing. I'm assuming that I'm to take it literally and not edit my blog entry tonight so i won't edit it. I have been a writer long enough not to make a whole bunch of mistakes anyway. I don't mean to say that to sound cocky. it's just a simple statement of fact that I have been writing sor nearly fifty years. In that amount of time you learn a thing or too about the craft. The one thing I never did learn though was to type. I am lucky to produce 20-25 words per minute. So I'm sure ten minutes have already gone by since I began working on this entry.

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uch of the answer to that depends on the situation. it almost typically happens that if it's a tragic situation then people are going to remember it better. For example there is a kinship among survivors of such things as the holocaust or even the survivors of a ship wreck or plane crash. reunions of these events are often held and memorials placed in their memory. When was the last time anybody put up a memorial to their high school prom or college frat party? When was the last time tickets to a big game that occurred X-number of years ago and are sold as memorabilia today brought millions? Go sell a trans-Atlantic trip ticket for the Titanic and see if it sells! Original stuff from that shipwreck is still worth a mint, much of it priceless. So again it depends on whether it was a fun, positive experience or a bad, negative one.



As Christians we are often confronted by those who want to know why a loving God would allow some of the things that happen in the world to happen. In this lesson we are going to attempt to address these questions.
As humans none of us are immune to the trials and struggles of day to day living. Problems are as natural to a lost and dying world as it is for the wind to blow in March. However Christians have an advantage when these problems come. We have the advantage of being children of God. Think of that for a moment. We are servants of God yes, but we are also children of God! John 1: 12 tells us “But to all who received him, who believed in His name, he gave the power to become children of God.”
What great news that is! As children of God it makes no difference what troubles beset us, we are assured that everything is going to be okay. Does that mean that God is going to simply make all our problems go away? No, it does not. What it does mean is that when we are faced with a problem God is there for us. He is our strength and our comforter. He will see us through. No matter what may beset us God is our fortress and we can rest assured that everything is going to work out exactly as He plans for it to work out. This is Lent. Christians everywhere are walking that last 40 days with Jesus. That’s right. Jesus Christ, the son of the Living God, lived and died as a human being. Jesus was, is, and always will be God, co-equal to the Father and one third of the trinity that makes up the Godhead. In spite of the fact that he was God, He willingly sacrificed Himself to the cross of Calvary. If God Himself is willing to suffer to the point of death, then why should we not expect to suffer as well? All too often the bright and positive aspects of Christianity are preached while the fact that we will suffer is ignored. The Bible is clear however that suffering is not optional for Christians. Jesus said “Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account,” Matthew 5: 11.
Based on this scripture it is obvious then that not only will we suffer as Christians but being Christian is itself a reason to suffer. Christianity is not easy folks! Jesus referred to it as a crucifixion. We read “He said “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me,” Luke 9: 23.
Now taking up a cross may not have as much significance in a world where executions are carried out by lethal injection, but to those who heard Jesus speaking it had great significance. It was very common practice for the occupying Roman forces to execute condemned prisoners by nailing them to a cross and letting them die. So those listening to Jesus understood very clearly that he was telling them that if they were going to be His servants they must be willing to suffer tremendously. Death on a cross was usually not an easy death. The condemned may linger for days as they slowly died. Each of those in Jesus presence when he uttered these words had likely witnessed the cruelty of the Roman cross first hand. They were well aware that it was a very cruel way to die. It was so cruel in fact that the Romans would not execute a condemned Roman citizen that way. Condemned Romans were beheaded or executed in some other fashion because the Romans knew it was the harshest death a human could endure.
Despite the cruelties of the cross however, God in the Person of Jesus Christ was willing to die on the cross. Those who serve God must be willing to endure equal suffering. Why does God allow suffering? For one thing God allows suffering because He knows that suffering makes us stronger. Each of us can attest to the fact that we grew the most during our times of extreme suffering. I remember when I was growing up and how I was always getting pains in my legs. Sometimes the pain was so severe I felt like crying and perhaps I did. My mother would always tell me that what I was going through was natural. She referred to my pains as “growing pains” and said they were a sign that my body was changing from that of a child into that of an adult. God used those pains to help my body mature. In similar fashion, he uses emotional distress to help us grow as human beings. Is this a pleasant process? Of course it isn’t. Pain hurts or we wouldn’t call it pain. By it’s very nature it is something we want to avoid because we know it is unpleasant. God uses this unpleasantness to make us into the people we are. Suffering is natural. All too often people think that becoming a Christian means all of our earthly troubles are over. Then when things go awry as they are certain to do they wonder why God would allow such things to happen. One of the most perplexing problems in furthering the gospel is that the world is troubled. People look at the many problems in the world and refuse to accept that a loving God would allow those things to happen. Why do babies die? Why do children suffer, sometimes horribly? These questions and many like them plague the world and prevent people from accepting that Jesus Christ could possibly have a role in it. However the world we live in is a fallen world. It is a world ruled by Satan and the forces of evil. It’s only natural that where evil rules evil will exist. Becoming a Christian does not make anybody immune to suffering. If anything becoming a Christian only assures us that we will suffer.
“Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ’s sufferings, so that you may be glad and shout for joy when His glory is revealed,” I Peter 4: 12-13.
None of us are above suffering in this world. God himself suffered here so we should not expect to be above it. What we should expect however is to be better Christians as a result of our suffering. What does suffering do for anybody that it might make us into better people? One thing suffering does is teach us that we can’t do it on our own. Left to our own devices we humans would run things ourselves. We would become proud of our accomplishments and God would soon be moved to the back burner. Suffering assures us that this isn’t going to happen. Suffering teaches us to depend on God and not upon ourselves. Peter goes on to say “Cast all your anxiety on Him, because he cares for you,” I Peter 5:7.
Suffering then brings us to depend on God. God is our Father and He wants us to bring our troubles and cares to him. Those of us who have children understand this. One of the hardest things for a parent to go through is watching their children suffer. When our children suffer the natural tendency is to want to fix it so that they aren’t suffering. God is no different. He knows we suffer and he wants us to cast our cares upon him. Jesus drove this point home in the passage known as the sermon on the mount when he said “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life? And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow, they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed as one of these,” Matthew 6: 25-29.
God knows our every need and he is more than willing to provide for them. In fact everything we do is done because he does it for us. Our very heartbeat depends upon him. Yet we so often feel as if we are in control and we don’t need Him. Parents can relate to this very well. Every parent is proud to see their child reach milestones and become more independent. Yet there is always a sense of loss when this happens because children no longer depend on us but do it for themselves. God is overjoyed when we are able to accomplish things but He wants us to always remember that the only way we are able to do these things is through Him. Suffering serves to remind us of our dependence on God.
God also allows suffering because He knows that suffering leads to the most growth. When I look back on my life I see many times of suffering great pain. I can also see that it was these times of great pain that led to the most growth. In fact if it was not for suffering, I would not be the person I am today. God used the pain of my suffering to shape me into what I am today. Was this process enjoyable? Of course it wasn’t. In fact there were times when the pain was nearly unbearable. However I would not be who I am today if as much as one second of my life had been any different. God uses pain to shape us just as much as an iron worker uses an anvil and a hammer to shape iron. I have often said that we serve a God who takes dung and turns it into food. Pain is like dung in that it produces growth.
So when a person asks me why God allows suffering I tell them that he permits it because he loves us. He loves us enough to know that we grow best under pressure. He uses the trials of life to produce jewels within us just as He uses pressure and intense heat to create diamonds. He does so because he loves us and wants us to be the very best we can be.