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Pastor Joynt's Devotionals

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Questions Week 8 Day 1

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WEEK 4

PSALM 22


How can a good God allow suffering?


There are seven things which the Christian faith says about suffering; together they frame this terrible problem, and offer an answer to it. When we are talking with someone about this issue, it is wise to remember that for many people the problem of pain and suffering is not theoretical and secondary, but rather personal and immediate. Everyone will undergo suffering, both directly and indirectly, at multiple points in their lives. Emotional support and understanding are just as important and sometimes more crucial than intellectual responses. People need help and empathy as much as explanations.

But eventually explanations are often necessary, because suffering can be a barrier to faith. The first step in the Christian approach to suffering, therefore, is acknowledgement, on both an intellectual and emotional level. Suffering is real and tragic. Anyone who minimizes suffering, or who ignores it, or who denies its reality, is not expressing a true Biblical perspective. The Psalms have an entire genre of lament.


What is your framework for dealing with suffering?

Can you find the verses Jesus prays on the cross in our Psalm?

FAMILY TIME— Pray for someone you know who is struggling physically and emotionally.

Posted by David Joynt with 0 Comments
Tags: suffering, strugglin
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Questions Week 7 Day 7

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WEEK 3

PSALM 95:1-7


Why believe in the Trinity?


The doctrine of the Trinity conveys the uniqueness of God’s personality and character. If God was simply a natural force within the world, subject to its laws, a creature of mammoth powers, but not the creator, then he could not direct history, renew the cosmos, and reverse the forces of death and disintegration. The fact that God is beyond everything “seen and unseen,” independent, and not bound by natural necessity, is the key to his grace. God was under no compulsion to create the cosmos, to invent human life, to have creatures that would become children and friends. If God were not beyond this world, we could not see it as his handiwork, and by inference know his love of beauty and order and diversity.


God’s glory and grace depend on his independence from his creation. Do you agree?


Read our Psalm as a prayer of praise.


FAMILY TIME— Do a craft or make something. How individual is each person’s picture or object? Talk about the world as God’s creation

Posted by David Joynt with 0 Comments
Tags: creation, trinity

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