More Max

Another post.....

bonnie, as i read the last line of your post, it gave me something of an epiphany (well, for me anyways, the rest of you may go, "duh" - LOL). all we can do is choose to believe TODAY. it's sort of like AA - one day at a time. doubt is as threatening as any addiction and must be faced and overcome each day. just like israel could only gather manna for one day, our faith is for today. today is the day of salvation - not as in, "you'd better say the sinner's prayer today", but as in Christ's salvation working in us each and every day for THAT day, delivering us from this PRESENT evil age one day at a time. that's how we go from glory to glory - one day at a time. b2 when he meditates uses "this is the day that the Lord has made. i will rejoice and be glad in it". no wonder Jesus said not to think on tomorrow - it's overwhelming. but, if i can get up each morning with my only goal to let Christ live in/thru me TODAY, well, it just seems more doable. brings new meaning to me as i think on this familiar scripture:


TODAY if you will hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion.


i don't have to concern myself with whether or not i will have faith to get thru tomorrow or next week or next month. TODAY is the only one that matters, the only one i am existing in, living in. so, believing TODAY - good enough :) -annie

When I first went to Tentmaker about 8 years ago, there was a regular poster there who had so much faith. His life was filled with painful, challenging setbacks. His health was really bad. He was poor. He had lived through a terrible childhood, a gang related youth....just a really painful struggle throughout his life....yet....this guy was filled with faith. He referred to God as Abba....and his signature line was "it's all about love". He had a family....several kids. He was Canadian. He was one of the most "christlike" guys I have ever "known".....although I did not really know him and did not communicate with him off the TM forum. Truthfully I was in awe of him. There were several others who posted at the same time who also just exuded the spirit of the Lord. Jeanne knew most of them. Actually she was involved with his outreach website at the time (she was much more fundie then, I guess) He had a message board attached to his website. Well, I kind of grew away from TM....just did not go there as much and never posted.....but I would check back now and then. One New Year's Day I tuned in and lo and behold the guy I am talking about....his name was PD.....had posted this heart wrenching post about his son, who at the stroke of midnight had tried to kill himself by shooting himself in the head. Thus ensued a many month (years) struggle of getting this kid (who survived but is very, very handicapped) proper medical care in the Canadian medical system who really just wanted to write him off. Days...weeks......months.....in a hospital many miles from their home.....and there was a special section of TM set up for messages to and from and about this boy and the struggle PD's family was going through. Throughout it all, he continued to maintain his strong faith, his belief in God's goodness and that this life was meant in large part to teach us the difference between good and evil and that there were certain lessons that could only be learned through suffering. He left TM...after a falling out with Gary (I think) He posted regular writings on his website message board and continued to post there. It was not a well known message board...almost underground sort of. I remember going there and reading one in which he compared this life to the training a navy seal receives. It was titled "Would I Do It Again"...in reference to the question he had been asked many times about his faith, his son, etc. His answer was a resounding YES. He was really an inspiration.....so imagine my surprise when, many months later I returned to check on the message board and he had completely and totally renounced his faith in the existence of God. He still said "it's all about love" but God was not a part of that love. Also...some of the other inspirational people who had posted on TM when he was there (when I first went there) were also questioning their faith....including a man who many here would know if I mentioned his name...which I feel I should perhaps not since I see he is again active and seems to have found his faith again. He was on the series of inclusion conference DVD's we got recently...but he was also agonizing on PD's message board. He was a bit more agnostic in his meanderings and he even started a website which dealt with his doubts. He has another well known website which he did not dismantle at the time he was doubting......although PD did take his off line. The message board still exists and I check back from time to time. PD left....and some of the others stayed but it has dwindled to like a post a month or so. So anyway....all this to say that it really, really affected me that this man who was so filled with faith could just "lose it". That was during a time Keith and I were really "discussing" total sovereignty vs. some degree of free will and to think that God had just cut PD off....just "let go" of him was not only repugnant to me...but terrifying. We've all heard...and probably said....that it is not our faith....but HIS...so to think that God just simply removed PD's faith was unacceptable. As if I determine what is acceptable or not. Keith, of course, total determinist that he is, was fine with it. Obviously it was for the greater good....that there were things PD could only learn in this season....probably one of them being that it was not his (PD's) faith...but God's faith in him. In fact, Keith has a very good friend...who I have mentioned before too. He was one of my mentors when I first came to TM....and we still communicate some to this day. He is going through a really, really bad time....marriage, job....health etc. and part of the lesson he thinks God has tried to teach him is that it is only through the christ within him that he (roy) can cry out to God. This just confuses me. It just does not seem right or fair...and now I have come to the meandering point in my posts that I don't even really remember what point I was trying to make. Perhaps no point. Perhaps the question what part do you think we play in having faith....if any. Is it all about him? And how, in light of PD's situation does that affect how much we can trust God to hold onto us? Keith "lost" his faith for ten years. He still believe in God and having gone into his desert of doubt a calvinist, he did not doubt his eternal destiny.....but for ten years his religion was "skydiving". He immersed himself in skydiving. He would not change the experience. I am thinking.....what if God decided to just "cut me loose" for ten years. How does that affect my security in those promises he makes in scripture? Never leaving me etc. What if "today" he doesn't speak? Do you think that happens? Or do we choose to quit hearing? Time to cut my losses and end this....

Cindi......

What Max Says

A post to an email list in response to a question about suffering etc.

Max Lucado says in one of his books concerning this that he sees the whole concept as a scale......you know....one of those old fashioned kinds of scales with the weights on one side and the stuff you weigh on the other? I think they call them a pan scale? Well, on the one side is all the hurts and heartaches and trials and problems we experience and suffer through. Plunk goes the scale....and he does not remove any of the things that we have suffered....yet.....after this life is over.....this life the Bible compares to a wisp of vapor......he so loads down the other side of the scale with incomprehensible glory that it totally and completely outweighs the bad things. There is a saying I read somewhere...and not to diminish the very real trials and heartaches some of you have endured but it goes something like this.......From heaven, even the most terrible life will look no worse than an inconvenient night in a bad hotel. or as Paul says it:For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us."

I am not making light of this whole issue. It is something that I have struggled with as well.

Cindi.......