God's best interest is always ours!

16:1 “I have told you all these things so that you will not fall away. 1 16:2 They will put you out of 2 the synagogue, 3 yet a time 4 is coming when the one who kills you will think he is offering service to God. 5 16:3 They 6 will do these things because they have not known the Father or me. 7 16:4 But I have told you these things 8 so that when their time 9 comes, you will remember that I told you about them. 10 “I did not tell you these things from the beginning because I was with you. 11 (John 16:1-4)



Over and over again in these verses Jesus is telling us not to forget what He is saying. Sure, that may seem obvious and rightly so. But I believe there is an even greater reason why He does: to prevent us from taking offense when it does happen. When we get irritated when things don't go our way, do we stop and say 'Oh yeah, you never said life, let alone the Christian life, would be easy did you, Lord?' No, or at least not nearly as often as we should. By taking His warnings to heart, it may not eliminate the suffering we have to endure, but hopefully it prevents us from turning against Him, which is truly the most important thing, both for His glory and the sake of our souls.



This is a pretty disturbing statement when you think about it, and easy to find parallels to both history and the present. Even Saul the 'Christian-killer' thought he was doing a glorious thing for the church, as did many Romans when they excommunicated the Jews in the first century. The Iraq war is another example of Christians doing what they likely believed was God's will. While of course I cannot know Bush or anyone elses heart truly, the world looks at what we've done as exemplary of Christ. The rest of the world becomes deceived then in thinking that our Prince of Peace is nothing but a warmonger. How much farther will things deteriorate in the name of our Holy Lord? Nothing but prayer and living faithfully can make a difference, war can only bring more of the same (nobody seems to be wincing now that Obama is increasing troops by 17,000 in Afghanistan either)!