Thoughts on Christ and His Word

God brings discipline and trials into our lives in order to increase our faith and bring out the character of Christ in us. Yet even as God brings discipline on us he sets limits on what will happen to us. Jeremiah wrote in Lamentations 3:22 "Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail." So just like God set a limit on what Satan could do to Job, he sets limits on all our discipline and troubles that He sends or allows to come our way. He also sets a time limit for the discipline and trials.  These will only last for a season. Jeremiah also wrote "For men are not cast off by the Lord forever. Though he brings grief he will show compassion, so great is his unfailing love.  Lamentations 3:31-32 So for us what we need to learn to do is to wait quietly for God to finish the work he started through the trials, the discipline and the troubles. Lamentations 3:26 says "It is good to wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.&q

Does man have free will to choose God or does God move a man's heart so that he must choose God? Jer 24:7 - I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the LORD. They will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all their heart. Jer 29:13 - You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. These verses seem to answer the question in contradictory ways. And so do many verses in Scripture point to two different and opposite conclusions. This falls into what can be called an antinomy. Antinomy: A contradiction between two apparently equally valid principles or between inferences correctly drawn from such principles.  Miriam Webster Dictionary A contradiction between two beliefs or conclusions that are in themselves reasonable; a paradox. Oxford Dictionary What to us are irreconcilable principles, to God its not a problem because He's got a bigger brain. Let's accept what God has said and move on.