We have good friends whose lives have been touched by tragedy.  Friday morning our friend accidentally shot and killed his teenage son while turkey hunting.  We have been reeling...our whole Northeast Kingdom of Vermont with the shock and grief involved.  There have been a lot of questions running around facebook.  Why?  How could God allow this?  You know the ones.

In response to a facebook tag:
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The more I know my Savior the more I sense His Spirit's grief within me. He does truly grieve for us in our circumstances and in our fallen world. I thought, too, of how God, the Father, can truly feel and grieve in this situation. He not only was responsible for His Son's death...He planned it and had it executed at His perfect time...and ... He turned His back on His Son in effect leaving Him...and ultimately He watched as it played out and meant nothing to the people He did it for. We go on happily and merrily about our ways never truly being touched by what He did. It does not affect our life's decisions about what we will do or where we will live or how we will raise our children differently from the world or even other Christians. When He takes a beloved one home to Himself because He can do that...He is God...and they are His because He created them...we shake our fists and curse Him and ask Him where He was. He was where He always was...right there being God... waiting for us to recognize that this life is NOT all there is...and that He is the ONLY reason for living and for making any choice in this life. He is not out there enjoying our pain...He is  sympathizing with our weaknesses and being our "shelter in the time of storm." Maybe this life truly isn't to make sense...where did we ... get that idea anyway...at least apart from God and His eternal purposes we walk in suffering, grief, pain, and in the dark. Now lets speak truth and life into our dear brothers and sisters in Christ who so much need their family in the weeks and months ahead...and let us not sin by not praying for them as Samuel said in I Samuel 12:23.

I'm doing a study called Living by the Book - Hendricks.  Here's my thoughts on Chapter 3.  The passage is I John 3:12.

Not as Cain, [who] was of that wicked one, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother's righteous.

 

Written by John

Context is in talking about loving our brother, righteousness is indicative of the righteous….sin is indicative of children of the devil.

Not actually a letter, the epistle is a sermon written to counter heresies that Jesus did not come "in the flesh," but only as a spirit. It also defines how Christians are to discern true teachers: by their ethics, their proclamation of Jesus in the flesh, and by their love.  The gnostics were rampant at this time.  John was trying to counteract their teaching with the true teaching that Jesus had come in the flesh.

 

2.  After reading the original story it is referring to in Genesis 4:1-16  I found it was premeditated murder.  Now Cain said to his brother Abel, "Let's go out ot the field."  And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him."

 

3.  Earlier in I Jn. 3:8a it says, "He that comitteth sin is of the devil, for the devil sinneth from the beginning."  Also, I John 3:10 says, "In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil:  whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother." So it is not really "dropped" in the middle of the chapter...he has continually contrasted how the righteous life and how the children of the devil live.   

4.  When I live out of love for others and God, I am blessed…but when I start focusing on myself or the ills of my “brother” so to speak there is no love and no unity or peace in my life.

5.  There are times in my life I can see now I thought about how to benefit myself or hurt others.  There’s even an aspect of premeditation.  I remember years ago when the Lord spoke to me about rehearsal scenarios in my mind of “what I could have said or did” in situations where I wasn’t quick enough on my feet for what someone had said to me.  I would go over and over how I could have come back and looked smarter or gotten the upper hand.  He spoke to me about how this was sin also even though it was in my mind.  That I needed to expend that energy where my pride was hurt or whatever in praying to be more like Him and accept the humility handed me…or to pray for the one who had wounded me…”hurting people hurt people.” 

   There are several times in our ministry lives where I knew the ones we were dealing with in our churches were premeditating as Cain had in trying to get rid of his brother.  There was no godly separation of ways, but a ripping, painful, premeditated sinning against us.  We sensed God’s staying hand at the same time as seeing satan all over the circumstances, attitudes, and actions of those surrounding us.  I don’t believe we will truly know until glory if those people were “of that wicked one” or just being used by him at that particular time…but it doesn’t really matter today as long as I am following and obedient.

Jealousy makes for much disunity in the body.  If my gift is not what you would have me to have…or your gift isn’t as important to me as it should be…or my ministry becomes an idol to me where I assume everyone should be as involved as I am…those all create disunity and disharmony in the body.  If we are consumed with love for one another and for our Savior who came in the flesh, we have little time for premeditated murder in our hearts.