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Fellowship Baptist Church
To review, a person may feel very unhappy and/or have less than good relationships with others because he thinks that he cannot trust a good God Who loves him and has wonderful plans for him. Thinking this way, a person naturally looks to other people to make him happy. When people don’t, he becomes angry at them and eventually at himself. But, determined to live, he develops plans which will only cause more heartache for him.
Contrast this with a person who knows that the good God who died on the cross for him loves him and will cause all things to work out for his good. Such a person lives from a position of ultimate security. He doesn’t need to demand anything from anyone. He is going to be all right no matter what. Such a person can choose to respect others, because he doesn’t have to protect his own ego. He can give up worrying about himself, and instead he can worry about helping others, because he knows God will look out for him.
Furthermore, such a person has the motivation for valuing other people and for looking out for them. God values them and loves them. And since there is a profound sense of gratitude for all that God has done, such a person finds himself compelled to love those whom God loves.
When a person doesn’t have to be selfish to survive, he finds himself free from his own fears and free to love others.
Feel free to email me at joeandsuzypal@yahoo.com.
Joe Palmer is the pastor of Fellowship Baptist Church in Kearny. He is happily married with three terrific children and two adoring dachshunds. He is of the very firm opinion that God exists, that the Bible is true, and that God in the person of Jesus Christ has saved him from his sin and prepared a place for him in paradise. His firm opinion is a long studied opinion held with happy confidence, and so, though by nature a bit high-strung and timid, he looks to his future with a joy and happy expectation which makes him largely unafraid of anything or any circumstance. The worse thing that can happen to him is that he can die, and the best thing that can happen to him is that he can die. Everything else is a detail which God will work out for his best. His ambitions revolve around reconciling people to God through Jesus Christ. This he attempts to do by declaring in appropriate ways that God is purely good and that He is the source of all of our joy and happiness. There is nothing about God one would not like, and He is our only hope. Joe is over-weight, out of shape, and as old as the town of Kearny; but he has a peace which surpasses understanding, and such peace makes this middle class American very rich indeed!
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