encouragement – Seeds In My Heart

I have been thinking about this verse all week:

Which had me thinking on life, building, being vs. destroying, destruction. Which led me to a great little rabbit trail. Follow along…

It started with the Hillsdale President (Larry Arnns) who spoke these words at Charlie Kirk’s Memorial,

“There’s a ladder that reaches up toward God. At the bottom are the ordinary good things around us everywhere. If we can call them by their names, they have being. The beings of the good things are figments of God… A good thing is a thing that has being.”

I found that Arnns’ conclusions are drawn from the works of Augustine (400 AD ish) and when I looked into his writings on this topic, I saw they could be summarized:

Evil has no life of its own; it is only the twisting or absence of the good that God creates.

See, we are in good Company as Truth Dwellers….because that summary led me to C.S. Lewis’ words in Mere Christianity,

“Goodness is, so to speak, itself: badness is only spoiled goodness. And there must be something good first before it can be spoiled. … Evil is a parasite, not an original thing.”

These are such deep thoughts. I’ve been pondering them deeply. It’s hard to even put it all into words so I’m grateful other men have done it for me. 🙂

So, evil is a corruption of what is good. It cannot create . It doesn’t build, it destroys. It cannot stand on its own. Evil depends on good to exist.

This contrast is seen everywhere right now.

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As we get older and experience more of life, even the most idealistic personalities among us can be tempted to be truly cynical about people, the fight against sin, the world, the state of the American church, and our country. Truly, evil and injustice are rampant, and deception and darkness covers the earth… BUT we must remind ourselves that the Lord warned us about these things and HE is where we rest our hope.

But how do we overcome the heavy-heartedness and burdened mind that can descend upon us when the darkness seems to be overwhelming, when people shock and disappoint us, or when it seems that there’s really no point in even trying to do and be good — because you’re still not as mature as you think you should be, you don’t see the fruit of your faithfulness, people don’t seem to listen to the Spirit of the Lord in you and instead very quickly listen to worldly ungodly voices, and the gap between what IS and what COULD BE in Christ seems to only widen?

Of course, the answer is to “Fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of God. Consider Him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart” Hebrews 12:3

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Seeds In My Heart

Tag: encouragement

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