I guess it goes without saying we are all well aware of what the curse is all about. It is accursed!!! Fighting the world, the devil the flesh, Murphy's Law, sickness, disease, sin, evil, wickedness in every place, ungodly laws & governments, broken people who don't their left hand from their right, etc. Exhaustible male and female relations, it's never enough or ever right! The list never seems to end! And yet we have seen God's patience over and over again, with peoples and nations. Unlimited warnings throughout the scriptures, and God's inexhaustible patience. Yet one law broken a long time ago in a Garden, brings God's curse to all living and all creation. Truly, it was an important law, given with unknown and unexplained ramifications, but with seemingly swift and total consequences! Is it me, or was there a hidden agenda, on God's part here!? I have always tried to put a positive spin on this and bow to God's sovereignty, but am I missing something. Perhaps my intellect and spirit can be enlightened even more, but on an emotional level, I struggle deeply. Am I alone in this? Am I crazy? Am I ungrateful?

Love & blessings...Tender Reed

Tender Reed,

I completely understand you. This world is accursed, so much suffering on our part while we are down here, but we weren't promised anything less, or more. To me, God created everything: evil, and good, but He has never known an evil thing, He is holy and pure and must only be in the presence of holiness, He cannot do wrong, it goes against who He is. Yet, we must understand... God isn't a big bad meany, even though it looks like it from our point of view. He never wanted mindless robots, what He wanted was someone who could share His love for life, understand holiness, but it takes a divine plan, something I'm sure God has always been trying to achieve.


He wanted beings who knowing full well what good, evil, kindness, hatred, and all emotion was, yet out of choice, chose good...Chose holiness over hatred, so that in the ages to come we might be like him in mind and spirit. It is God's divine plan for Man's redemption and intimacy with God. Man had to go through all of the crap and from our point of view, we say: "How could God do that to us!?" Yet all he did was give us tools, and free will, we chose sin. From that point God in all his Holiness could have just destroyed us, yet he wrote a plan B, the Redemption of mankind, even better than before!

Thanks for your thoughtful response. If I were to say, that this curse is not fair, I would think that God would have to agree. Also being aware that the Lord's heart was hurt and grieved, first by Lucifer, then by 1/3 of the angels, then by Adam and Eve, and then by everyone since. But was not God aware that anything created could not be perfect & holy like Him???? Are we then being punished for not being God??? What's up with that? Again, I can only admit, I am missing something important here. Or has no one else ever asked these same questions? The closest I can think of is Job, but his questions were personal, rather than all inclusive as mine are. Indeed, who am I Lord, but the work of your hands!

Love & blessings...Tender Reed

Your welcome TR, and your not alone brother, I have so many questions just like yours... I wish I knew the answer's to all of them, but for somethings we will just have to wait. The way I see it though, it's sort of like Salvation: God knows exactly who will be saved because he can see the future, yet he gives every person a free will to be saved. Is God a meany because he knew you weren't gonna be saved, even though he gave you the option? If I knew the Patriot's were gonna win the Superbowl, but I also knew that the Ravens had the ability to win, am I a big meany? Even though they had the ability to do so? In reality, God knows we are gonna screw up, because he can see the future. But God gave us free will my friend, and our ancestors and us have all screwed it up, but God keeps giving us chances.

In my personal opinion TR, I think God gave us free will, but he saw that in the end through all the suffering, through all the pain, through all the misery, in the end... He had a people that loved him far more than any created being could, because they have been redeemed and have known sin. God couldn't make such a being because he cannot stand sin...Like I said, his divine plan.

Tender Reed and bygrace ~~ I appreciate how you both have expressed deep questions and insight that affects us as lovers of our God ~~

~~ I was wondering why God has permitted so much evil and sadness and sorrow today, too, T.R. ~ evil and sin and sorrow breaks God's Heart (i.e., now pedophiles are excusing their behavior as a legitimate attraction to the innocents) . .and the world wants it legalized . .

~ Who can understand Holy God's longsuffering? ~~ as you say, T.R. God is inexhaustibly patient . . our Holy God as you say bygrace simply wants love to be our choice toward Him, and He moved Heaven and earth to save! ~~His ways are so much higher than ours ~~ and through the heartache and sorrow, Jesus purposes a set apart people/church/bride who truly love Him ~~ oh, the worship and exalted halleluiahs and gratitude surrounding God as He reveals His Glory at every saint overjoyed near Him gazing on His Holiness ~~ who can know the full satisfaction of all the saints overwhelmingly thrilled to adore Him~~~ luvs we shall when we transition there~


oh, God,~~ has sin reached its proportion? We love You, Lord, oh Holy and Loving and Good God ~ believing You keep us close to You, though we feel tired and frustrated in the midst of this world's 'darkened' pleasure . . You shall have Your own, and no one or anything can take us from You~

I so get your frustration, T.R. ~~ and bygrace, thank you for sharing your reply ~~

You're not alone in feeling that way, Tender Reed. I do struggle with it from time to time. I often find myself questioning God's sense of fairness and justice knowing that all we can cling to are a bunch of scrolls written by people who had lived thousands of years before us.

However, we only see in part. We see the world through our sinful eyes. And to me, the biggest proof is the changed life of a believer. Throughout the centuries we have seen countless of lives transformed by the gospel. Sure other religions can lay claim that their teachings have changed lives too, but it's nothing like Christianity.

And the fact that the Bible teaches that God laid down His very life for us speaks volumes. It resonates with me on a deeper level. God sacrificing Himself for us? That's unheard of. And that's pure, unadulterated love.

Our senses are so tainted by sin that we are immune to it. And thus our minds cannot grasp the essence of holiness. However, when all the blinders are off, we will see the full contrast between sin and holiness.

That is why the great multitude in Revelation 19:2 are affirming that God's judgments are "true and just". This multitude have seen the full magnitude of evil, having been subjected to the antichrist. Their harrowing experiences on earth have led them to the ultimate truth that man is sinful and God is holy. Hope that helps you in some way. :)

Tender Reed, first, thanks for this thread. I think we all feel the same way you do. We cannot understand God's Ways or His Mercy. I think this is where faith comes in. We trust in His holiness, we trust in His Word. We trust our very salvation, our eternal lives to Him, even thou we have never seen Him. We trust the things we cannot understand thru faith in Him. After joining RITA, I have a better understanding of His Grace, and that has helped me a lot. I understand we are not talking about grace, but questioning evil, and how it seems to be everywhere, all the time. It shows in sickness, crime, government, religion, it is ever present, everywhere. And it wears on us watchers, we long to go home so bad. The reason for that is our love for God is so strong. The more we see evil and corruption, the more we love and desire God. In giving us free will, he also gave us the ability to question His ways, not to doubt Him, but to build our trust and faith in Him. May God continue to bless you and ease your mind. We are going home soon TR. Stay strong my brother.

God is abundant in His Love, Grace and Mercy ~~ He loves to 'show off' His essence this way ~~

what better way to shower His blessings upon cruddy sinners who cannot boast of any power to recreate and make new fallen mankind ~~~ oh, Jesus is the Power to instill our understanding through Scripture, the seriousness of our plight and His free Gift to make new His children saved in Jesus Christ ~~ we are convicted, and moved to receive the Gift of the Beautiful Savior and His Mercy~ ~~ renewed in spirit dear saints, surely it won't be difficult for our Lord to raise our bodes at the call of the catching away ~~

notice in this verse, it speaks past tense:

Romans 5:9 . . "Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. . . . "

Our spirits are raised to the heavenlies, near our Lord, declared citizens there already ~~~ we roam this earth and are passing through . . but our hearts and minds and spirits are with our Lord and His saving power . .all that He may glorified for saving sinners ~ Lord, thank You for your display of Love and Majesty! ~~ In HIM we live and breathe ~~

I see the curse as a being a function of God's holiness. It's a bit like those packages of meat that are "fresh" for three months if unopened, or 5 days if opened. As long as it's unopened it remains sterile and uncorrupted. But once you open it, bacteria and yeast float in (they're in the air, floating around our corrupted bodies) and the decline into further corruption begins.

God is Holy, holy, holy. Utterly pure. As long as we remain in Him and aren't opened to the corruption around us, we are alive in Him. The moment we move outside of His Holiness the corruption begins and increases until our flesh falls apart into dust. The problem is that our flesh is made in the image of our Father Adam and our Mother Eve. And we will all chose to open ourselves to the corruption around us, and begin the long decay.

I mourn the decay. But I rejoice that Yeshua our Lord and Betrothed chose to be (temporarily) separated from His Father to be joined to His Bride just as the first Adam chose to leave his eternal life to remain joined with his bride even though it meant his own death. And that just as our spirit has been perfected in Him, so our flesh will also be perfected in Him as He makes things all new again, as it was in the beginning, Holy and good. This curse is just a phase we're going through. There is Life on the other side.

Email: TxThom@Raptureintheairnow.com

Perhaps Today: I think you sum it up so simply but profound. We just have to have blind faith and trust. There can be no other explanations for things we do not understand.

Great thread Tender Reed and some really great insight. I had this devotional in my email today and I felt led to post it.

Why are we still here? Jesus died on the cross two thousand years ago and completed the work of salvation “once for all.” So why doesn’t He just rapture all of us so we can be with Him? One man told me that we are all just waiting for Jesus to build our mansions in heaven. I thought to myself, “It took Him only six days to create the entire universe. Can your mansion really be that difficult?”

If I were that guy and I thought my mansion in heaven was the only thing delaying the coming of the Lord, I would be praying, “Lord, forget the mansion. Just come and get me out of here!” And why wouldn’t the omniscient God have thought ahead and had those mansions already prepared? There is obviously something else going on here. It seems clear that God is interested not only in our final destination but also in the journey because on that journey He does a work in our lives that has eternal value.

As a father of wonderful young children I can tell you that when kids get into a vehicle, they have only one thing on their minds— arriving at their destination. Five minutes into a five-hour road trip my kids will begin asking, “Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?” And the incessant inquiry will not abate until we have arrived.

This is how many of us are when it comes to God’s will for our lives. We just want to get there already. We want to hear the little GPS unit say, “You have arrived.” But in most cases there is a great deal of time that elapses between when God calls us and when we have fulfilled His will for our lives. What we need to understand is that the journey is an important process that matters very much to God. The process of following Him in obedience, step by step, through many unknowns, trials, and difficulties, is a significant part of our development and preparation.

One day a little boy happened upon a butterfly trying to break out of its cocoon. The little boy decided to help the struggling butterfly, but after tearing the cocoon open, he discovered that the butterfly inside was shriveled and weak—so frail, in fact, that it soon died. What the little boy did not realize is that pushing against the cocoon was a necessary part of the butterfly’s development. Without the struggle the cocoon provided, the butterfly would not have the strength to survive when it emerged.

God uses the journey to teach us faith, to refine our character, and to equip us for the greater challenges that lie ahead. “If you have raced with men on foot and they have tired you out, then how can you compete with horses?” (Jer. 12:5, amp). In most cases, without the journey, we would not be ready to step into the fullness of what God has for us. The journey is not just necessary for fulfilling God’s will for our lives. It is in many ways an integral part of God’s will for our lives.

In fact, even if you are in the process of seeking God’s will right now, you are actually already fulfilling a part of it. God promises in Psalm 32:8 to “instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go.” My friend, don’t make the mistake of thinking, even for a moment, that just because you don’t know today what God’s will is for your life that you are not making any progress. Something is happening right now. Your faith is being stretched, and your patience is being tried. Your spiritual ears are being tuned as you listen to hear the voice of God’s Spirit. You are confronting doubts and questions. You may be going through a great struggle, but that struggle is all part of the process of birthing all God wants to do in your life. God always prepares us in advance for what He has in store for us! That process may be uncomfortable, but it is necessary nonetheless. Get ready. Good things are coming for you!

By Daniel Kolenda.

Thanks for sharing RM. Great article. Have to remember that one, six days to create the universe. Who needs a mansion?!

Love & blessings...Tender Reed

hmm I wonder if the word SIN stands for an acronym or fits one?

Selfish
Indulgent
Nature

Selfish
Immoral
Nature

Sudden
Immoral
Nature

Sad
Immoral
Nature

Sick
Immoral
Nature

hmm these all seem to fit?