God is a Sharing God
Michael Reeves in his book Delighting in the Trinity sharing Richard of St. Victor’s (1150s) thoughts on the Trinity:
Richard argued that if God were just one person, he could not be intrinsically loving, since for all eternity he would have had nobody to love.
If there were two persons, he went on, God might be loving, but in an excluding, ungenerous way. After all, when two persons love each other, they can be so infatuated with each other they simply ignore everyone else – and a God like that would be very far from good news.
But when the love between two persons is happy, healthy, and secure, they rejoice to share it. Just so it is with God, said Richard. Being perfectly loving, from all eternity the Father and the Son have delighted to share their love and joy with and through the Holy Spirit.
It is not then, that God becomes sharing, being triune, God is a sharing God, a God who loves to include. Indeed, that is why God will go on to create. His love is not for keeping but for spreading.
The Sentence Against God
Randy Alcorn talks about how remarkable that God would create a world in which no one would suffer more than he:
“Can God judge us? How can He know about suffering?” snapped one woman, ripping a sleeve to reveal a tattooed number from a Nazi concentration camp. “We endured terror... beatings... torture... death!”
Other sufferers expressed their complaints against God for the evil and suffering he had permitted. What did God know of weeping, hunger, and hatred? God leads a sheltered life in Heaven, they said.
Someone from Hiroshima, people born deformed, others murdered, each sent forward a leader. They concluded that before God could judge them, he should be sentenced to live on Earth as a man to endure the suffering they had endured. Then they pronounced a sentence:
Let him be born a Jew. Let the legitimacy of his birth be doubted. Let his close friends betray him. Let him face false charges. Let a prejudiced jury try him and a cowardly judge convict him. Let him be tortured. Let him be utterly alone. Then, bloody and forsaken, let him die.
The room grew silent after the sentence against God had been pronounced. No one moved, and a weight fell on each face.
For suddenly, all knew that God already had served his sentence.
Some people can’t believe God would create a world in which people would suffer so much. Isn’t it more remarkable that God would create a world in which no one would suffer more than he?
God’s Son bore no guilt of his own; he bore ours. In his love for us, God self-imposed the sentence of death on our behalf. One thing we must never say about God—that he doesn’t understand what it means to be abandoned utterly, suffer terribly, and die miserably.
That God did this willingly, with ancient premeditation, is all the more remarkable. Jesus said, “I lay down my life for the sheep.... No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord” (John 10:15,
Sibbes on Prayer
Richard Sibbes talking about prayer:
A Christian complains he cannot pray. `Oh, I am troubled with so many distracting thoughts, and never more than now!’ But has he put into your heart a desire to pray? Then he will hear the desires of his own Spirit in you. `We know not what we should pray for as we ought’ (nor how to do anything else as we ought), but the Spirit helps our infirmities with `groanings which cannot be uttered’ (Rom. 8:26), which are not hid from God. `My groaning is not hid from thee’ (Psa. 38:9). God can pick sense out of a confused prayer. These desires cry louder in his ears than your sins. Sometimes a Christian has such confused thoughts that he can say nothing but, as a child, cries, `O Father’, not able to express what he needs, like Moses at the Red Sea.
Do You Complain or Lament?
What's the difference between complaining and lamenting? Maybe on the surface not much. But as with many thing in the Christian life, it boils down to what's going on inside the heart.
Complaining is about you being right and about getting things off your chest. It's "me centered" and, if directed toward God, it typically uses God instead of worships him.
Lament is different.
The Lent Devotional, "Journey to the Cross," puts it this way:
"Lament is not about getting things off your chest. It’s about casting your anxieties upon God, and trusting him with them. Mere complaining indicates a lack of intimacy with God. Because lament is a form of prayer, lament transforms our cries and complaints into worship. Walter Brueggemann says that undergirding biblical lament is “a relationship between the lamenter and his God that is close and deep enough for the protester to speak in imperatives, addressing God as ‘you’ and reminding him of his covenantal promises.” Anyone can complain, and practically everyone does. Christians can lament. They can talk to God about their condition and ask him to change things because they have a relationship with him. To lament is to be utterly honest before a God whom our faith tells us we can trust. Biblical lament affirms that suffering is real and spiritually significant, but not hopeless. In his mercy, our God has given us a form of language that bends his ear and pulls his heart."
You Can't See Your Own Face
When we have people around us, who love us and care for us, and are willing to speak into our lives, it benefits us. One of God's greatest means of grace in our lives is the accountability and encouragement from other believers. Simply, put we can't see our own face, so we need those around us who can. Here's a quote from the Journey to the Cross devotional:
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We need others to remind us of the gospel, to speak the truth in love for our edification. We must be grounded in community if we are to be rooted in the gospel. In other words, the very people from whom we are trying to hide our true selves, God has ordained to help us see.
To use Dan Allender’s phrase, “You can’t see your own face.” That is, when God shines light on our lives, as we have been talking about, we become visible to others. We desperately need them to tell us what they see, good and bad. It’s not that other people’s opinions are absolute truth, but neither are our isolated opinions of ourselves. To be humble means we are willing to be seen as we are, by God and man. Our pride resists this kind of exposure, but it takes humility to become humble.
Roy Hession comments: “We cannot be in the light with God, and in the darkness with our brother ... We must be willing to know ourselves for what we really are, and we must be willing for our brother to know this as well. We will not hide ourselves from those with whom we should be in fellowship. We will not cover our faults. We will speak the truth about ourselves with them. We will be ready to give up our spiritual privacy. We will not keep bad feelings in our hearts about another person.”