OT DAY 19 - God Makes You Learn to Live without Knowing Why (請按此處收聼廣東話Cantonese podcast click here)

    Today's Reading: Genesis 4:5b-9

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Please click this link to read Genesis 4:5b-9

English(ESV): https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis 4&version=ESV

Chinese: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=創 世 記 4&version=CUV

Bible Study

     Today's passage gives lots of people many guessing. Who caused Cain to kill his own brother? If God accepted Cain's offering, would this killing not happen? Why God allowed this to happen?  

Let's take a look at what Professor John Goldingay says (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Goldingay) :

    

     If Cain had chosen to speak, he himself would surely have wanted to know why? as we do when something troublesome happens.  But God has also anticipated that why.  When people ask why? in this fashion, they usually get no answer, even when there is one.  There was a story behind Job's suffering that could have explained the why, but God does not tell him this story;  God makes him learn to live without knowing why…
     Here, too, God is not interested in what happened to cause the acceptance of Abel's sacrifice and the rejection of Cain's.  What God is interested in is what Cain does now, how Cain copes with the experience of his little brother being blessed when he is not blessed…
     If Cain doesn't know how to deal with disappointment and anger, he will find a metaphorical snake being in wait for him, lying at the door when he goes out. It is odd that the word "sin' is not used in Genesis 3 when we would assume sin made its entry into human history.  In the way Genesis talks, sin makes its entry in Genesis 4 after Cain's experience of God's not accepting his sacrifice.  This is how Genesis introduces us to the first of the Old Testament's key terms for wrongdoing.  In its occasional nonreligious uses in the Old Testament, the verb for 'sin' denotes falling short of a target that you should have hit but that maybe you didn't even aim at.  It suggests willful shortcoming, failure for which you can make no excuse.  

John Goldingay. Genesis for Everyone. Louisville,KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010, p.67-68.

      You do not know why God did that to you or allowed that to happen to you and you are disappointed and angry with God. Have you experienced that? How did you get out of that kind of disappointment and anger? Or, are you still there angry with God? 

Let's have a time to be still and give the Holy Spirit space to speak through the passage we have just read. Offer this time up to Jesus as you listen to him, while listening to "Gabriel's Oboe":  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmax47l2hLU

Spiritual Journal

    The title I heard from Jesus today is: God makes you learn to live without knowing why

    The message I receive from Jesus today is a painful message. Do you accept this is the answer from Jesus when you want to ask why?

    God makes you learn to live without knowing why

    Obedience does not need to know why. If soldiers need to know why their captain orders them to dash and attack that mountain even with heavy casualties, everybody might die!

    Love does not need to know why. If you love someone, you trust him/her, and you don't need to know why. 

    What I receive from Jesus is an idea, a thought that you may never think of. Do you think God knew Cain would kill Abel? Of course God knew that. Would that be the reason God did not accept Cain's offering in order to give him a warning? But, instead of changing his stone heart to become soft again, Cain's heart was hardened, just like Pharaoh in Moses time. God gave him a chance, then another chance, then another chance, but Cain kept his stone heart.

    Sometimes, something happen to you because God anticipates what you will do and he gives you a lesson or punishes you in advance so that you have a better chance to change. But, we as human beings only want to ask why and live painfully when we do not know why or even live in a disconnected life because we are angry with God.

    Remember, God makes you learn to live without knowing why! 
    

Dear Lord Jesus,

Help us not to ask why but to be whole-heartedly loving you each day to live freely and joyfully each day. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.

Please click this link to worship with us -

從心合一

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJWZQyLzDRQ

10,000 Reasons (Bless the Lord) Matt Redman

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXDGE_lRI0E

You may choose to follow my other daily blog: 

Daily Devotion on Fire 2(2 years plan -One year New Testament, one year Old Testament): 

http://bishopsilas2.blogspot.ca/

Daily Devotion on Fire (3 years and 3 months plan, one chapter a day to finish reading the whole Bible): 

http://bishopsilas.blogspot.ca/

Break.Build (40 days daily devotion- For Renewal or First Step for new Christians): http://www.breakbuild.blogspot.ca/

Emmanuel330 (40 weeks First Step Bible Study): 

http://emmanuel330.blogspot.ca/

This blog:

Discipler 123 (Daily devotion using N.T. Wright's NT for Everyone as source)

http://discipler123.blogspot.ca/

Rev. Nicky Gumbel's daily devotion: Bible in One Year

http://www.htb.org.uk/bioy