After I read this letter I couldn’t help but respond.
You are obviously a woman with destiny… a destiny of unprecedented amounts of grace and compassion. It’s beautiful… it’s from God… it’s special and unique.
You have the heart of God. That heart that would give up your place in eternal peace to save as many as you can. That is God’s heart to. That is why He sent His son. So that none would be lost. He literally allowed His son to take upon Himself all the sin and pain of the world on His shoulders. Pain that crushed His very heart to death. Even in the face of this excruciating death Jesus looked out and the people and cried to His Father on their behalf… Father forgive them for they know not what they are doing.
I picture God in the moment on His face weeping, lamenting for those who could not see His son. He lays down weeping for you who cannot see His son for whom he intended Him to be… the Savior of the world.
It’s not your job to save people… it’s not your job to save yourself. Nor do you have the ability to do either. You are not perfect, you are not God, you are not sinless and you didn’t give your life for the world. Let go… surrender… give yourself to the one who died for you. Join His mission to spread His light and life to the whole earth.
I don’t know how God could send someone to hell. I cannot even fathom perfect love let alone perfect justice. What I do know is that our imperfect love and our imperfect justice interprets that as something unjust and horrible.
But just like it’s not our job to save people it’s also not our place to judge. We can’t live with the thought of our loved ones living their whole lives not experiencing the freedom that comes in relationship with Christ, let alone what will come after this life… we’re not meant to deal with that… we’re not meant to carry that burden or to judge who will spend eternity in heaven and who will not.
You have been in school for a while now… You have studied your way through grade school and High school and University and now you are working on your masters. All though the years there have been people on the same journey who have not made it. They have fallen short, they have failed, and dropped out or just gave up. It’s not your job as a student to go after all those people and try to save them from that failure.
We have been given free will. God desires us to love Him with all our minds, hearts and strength. He is God… He could have created us to love Him like a robot but He longed for us to choose Him. Someday you will meet a man and fall in love. If I could cast a spell on your dream man to love you for all of time would that be good enough for you. Or do you want someone to truly love the woman you are… ever part, even things he doesn’t quite understand.
Well same with God, He longs for us to love Him with All our hearts, all our minds and all our strength even the parts of Him that we don’t understand fully.
After reading this beautiful letter, this honest heart cry, and this painful wrestle I simply had to respond. But I realize even as I respond to this that I cannot save you either. I want to, I want God to use my words to bring some sort of revelation but the best thing I could do for you is pray. This is your personal journey… I am confident that God can handle this. And I can tell that God has tremendous plans for your life.
So after all these persuasive words I leave you with a message that will truly change your life if you believe it…
Jesus Loves You.
After reading that letter, heres some food for thought, Lori
oops….. I forgot the food lol.
Heres another take on St. Paul
The idea that divine justice requires forgiveness accords very well with the New Testament analogy between God and a loving parent. It also illuminates in an intriguing way the nature of Gods opposition to sin. As the Augustinians see it, God opposes sin enough to punish it, but not enough to destroy it altogether; instead of destroying sin altogether, he merely confines it to a specially prepared region of his creation, known as hell, where he keeps it alive for an eternity. According to our alternative picture, however, God forgives sin for this very reason: In no other way could he oppose it with his entire being. For as the St. Paul saw so clearly, our specific sins express a sinful condition, and the latter is a form of spiritual death; it is simply our condition of being separated or estranged or alienated from God and from each other. So the opposite of a sinful condition is a state of reconciliation; and if that is so, then God cannot be against sin, cannot oppose it with his entire being, unless he is for reconciliation. And he can hardly be for reconciliation unless he is prepared to forgive others even as he has commanded us to forgive them. Indeed, if God should refuse to forgive someone, as is not even possible given his loving nature, he would then separate himself from this person; and that is the very essence of sin as Paul himself understood it.
Thomas Talbott …The inescapable Love of God
Thanks for you comments John… always interesting for sure… I knew this letter would draw out a comment from you… this is the wrestle of so many hearts… a heart that shows a depth of love and compassion that has the ability to change the world… you possess that kind of compassion too… Compassion like that coupled with surrender in Christ has limitless possibilities.
In terms of your comment I am pretty sure sin had not been confined to hell… have you seen the world we live in? Heck… let alone the world I can see sin in my own heart more than I would care to admit… I am so thankful for God’s grace and the sacrifice of His son Jesus who paid for my sin. I thank Him for the authority he gives me to overcome that which tries to hold me back.
Have a great day…
Beautiful response to difficult questions.
A beautiful letter.