Mt. Zion Bus Crash, Wednesday,

WHEN CAN THIS BE PREVENTED?

Monday we committed to addressing a number of issues in these five posts. Each day we will link to the previous posts:

• The Big Picture 
• Why Did This happen? 
• When Can This Be Prevented?
• What Should I Pray Now?
• How Can I Trust God Again?

As I contemplate today’s post, and indeed all week’s posts, I am reminded of something that is completely counter-intuitive, namely, that our faith can, and I believe will be built up, even in the midst of these difficulties. However, that can only happen if our understanding of God is based on “rightly divided truth” (2 Timothy 2:15) which we will try to do again today. But be aware, many of you will be affected in different ways, like the way a pebble in a pond causes a ripple effect. Let me give you a comment from a pastor from day 1. He said, “Mark, things like this happen to the ungodly, why shouldn’t they happen to us too?”

Here are today’s issues we left you with on Monday. . .

When Can This Be Prevented:

Surely there are special prayers for specific instances that I can TRUST God to hear and answer, and ANSWER MY WAY, aren’t there? What does “His sovereignty” mean, especially in the light of sataN being the “god of this world.” Did the evil one “throw-a-fastball” by God?” He can’t do that, can he? Does God ever look down from heaven and say, “Gabriel, Michael, come here quick. How did that happen?” And moving forward, can I keep God from choosing to allow something difficult from happening? So all of this brings up the question, could this have been prevented?

If you do not want to read the rest of this post, here is the simple answer, “I have no idea if these things can be prevented or not!” But in the next few paragraphs. . .

I Will Share With You What I Do Know:

1 John 5:14-15 tell us that we can have confidence, NOT MERELY that God will hear our prayers, BUT so that “. . . we KNOW that we have the petitions that we desired of Him.”

Mark 11:24 states something similar when it says that we are to pray believing that we have ALREADY received that which we prayed for.

These two verses (among others) tell me one thing clearly and that is that I CAN CONFIDENTLY ask something AND EXPECT to receive it! I love Psalm 5:3 which says that we can come to the Lord in the morning, lay our requests before Him and then WAIT IN EXPECTATION.

So where’s the problem?

Why Wasn’t the Mt Zion Bus Tragedy Prevented?

To discuss this I need to address something that I believe DOES NOT OCCUR in the heavenlies. Some of you will disagree with me and I am okay with that, but if you respond, please respond with what Scripture says, okay?

Okay!

I have many godly friends that are “scared-to-death” of things that they say (like, scared-to-death) because they view Proverbs 18:21a, “Life and death are in the power of the tongue. . . “ to mean that whatever they say, can and will come back onto them. These very same people, again, godly friends of mine will say that God is absolutely sovereign. And I know them! They mean it! They are sincere!

Here’s the problem, if God is sovereign, then can my words overrule God’s direction? And they would answer yes. The reason they would answer yes is because of their view of “authority” which we’ll get to shortly.

Let me give you an example of God’s sovereignty when my words “hold the power of life and death,” as viewed above.

GOD
Gabriel, I want you to head on down to earth and comfort little Johnny before his big final.

GABRIEL
I’m on my way!

JOHNNY
Walking into class.
Oh, I just know that I am going to flunk this test.

GOD
Gabriel, stop! Don’t go. Little Johnny just spoke death into his test results. I can’t do anything about it.

You may think the above is silly, even if you define, “life and death in the power of the tongue” as stated above, but I am keeping the example simple, for clarity sake.

I repeat, you may think this is silly, but let me tell you why the above example is actually diabolical. This is diabolical because it goes to the misunderstood statement, “sataN is the god of this world” (2 Corinthians 4:4) which is taken to mean that sataN has dominion over this world, when its real meaning is simply that when I or when the world follows the lead of the evil one, or is influenced by the evil one he is our “god” or our focus, or whom we follow.

Why do my godly friends, whom I truly love, say this? Simple, because in the wilderness during Christ’s temptations sataN himself offered to Jesus all of the kingdoms of the world if Jesus would bow down and worship him (Matthew 4:8-9). Remember that sataN misquoted Scripture to God Almighty in the wilderness, during this conversation. Do we actually believe he would tell the truth about anything else?

But let me keep going. Why then do these friends of mine say that the evil one has this kind of authority? ANSWER: Because in the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve gave up legal right to the planet. Here’s one of the problems with that kind of thinking. AFTER THE GARDEN, God Himself claims sovereignty over all. He Himself also claims that He does WHATEVER He wants (Psalm 103:19, 115:3, 135:6).

Okay, follow me. If sataN has authority the way many think and believe. The following would occur.

GOD
Gabriel, I want you to head on down to earth and comfort little Johnny before his big final.

GABRIEL
I’m on my way!

SATAN
Claiming authority.
I will cause little Johnny to flunk this test.

GOD
Gabriel, stop! Don’t go. The evil one has just claimed authority onto Johnny’s test results. And I can’t do anything about it.

Again, this may seem silly to you, and FORGIVE ME my friends who think this way, but I have just used these examples to make a MUCH BIGGER point. A point that I believe transcends our denominational lines and is the basis of problems in EVERY CHURCH I go to.

The Problems:

• God is not to be trusted, so we make excuses for Him regarding what occurs here on earth.
• God’s will is not “really” sovereign and therefore not consulted!

I recently quoted a friend of mine who likes to say, “God’s answers are always bigger than our prayers.”

Men and women prayed for protection for this bus, but God intervened in what we would call a tragic way. And I would agree with you, completely! But this we know, God is sovereign, and so even though we do not understand “why” this happened, we trust “who” is sovereign.

Summing Up What We Know:

1. This DID NOT occur because sataN out-foxed the Lord.
2. Could this have been prevented? I don’t know? I lean toward saying, “No” because of what God will do and is doing through this tragedy.
3. There is a young lady in heaven who would not want to be anywhere else. Her father said recently, “This is such a great reminder; we are like a wisp of smoke; only here for a moment and it’s gone. Life is not about us, it’s about God.”

Tomorrow we will look into prayer itself and how,

1. In spite of this tragedy, we can pray with confidence.
2. And that we should seek God’s will.