Ok so I’m not actually drunk; I’m just feeling very emotional right now so I’m going to say whatever I want like I would if I were drunk. I just got back from seeing “Dear John.” That movie is emotionally intense on so many levels, but what I’m thinking of now is the main character’s father, who is mentally handicapped. His son didn’t realize that he had mental problems so he was very hard on his Dad. He never told his Dad how he much he cared for him until his Dad was dying. One of my kids has some problems, not nearly that bad, but it’s still there so I feel a lot on this issue. I’m so tired of this world. There are so many hurting lonely people with no one to help them. I can’t wait for this to be over. Yes, my life is pretty good, but that doesn’t help the retarded kid who parents abuse him because they don’t know how to deal with it.

Of course the solution to all this is the gospel, but the church doesn’t know what the gospel is. Most evangelicals (people of the gospel) don’t know nor care what the gospel is. Even when you find people who get the gospel they don’t bother applying it. They get that there is more to the gospel than welcoming Jesus into our hearts. They get that Jesus in now Lord of the world and is restoring all of creation to peace and harmony with Jesus as the head. They even get God has begun that process through Spirit empowered believers. Unfortunately it doesn’t actually seem to happen in their world, nor do they expect it to. It’s like they hear Jesus say “go preach the gospel saying, ‘the kingdom of God has come near.’” But then stop listening when Jesus says “heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead” at the end of that sentence. It’s like the gospel is some nice theory.

I’m tired of Christians blaming God for how broken things are. I’m tired of safe thinking where we are open to God healing the people and fixing relationships but don’t believe it will actually happen. The Bible says the prayer of faith will heal the sick. Do you know what faith is? Faith is not being able to imagine that something is not true. So if I have faith for healing that means when I pray for someone I can’t imagine them not being healed. If our belief is that most of the time God does not want to heal the people we pray for, I’m sorry, but it is impossible for us to have faith. That is not God’s fault. That is our fault.

Yes, God did allow the world to become broken, but only so if could be fixed through Jesus. The Church must allow God to fix the world through his chosen instrument – Us. And, yes, we can block God (remember Paul saying “don’t quench the Spirit”) so don’t automatically blame God when God doesn’t appear to be doing things he said he would do.