Response to Romans Road

Response from friend:

This will be something new for me, and I am looking forward to learning more!

After I have followed you these days for various lessons, I am much quiet in my heart now, I believe the existence of God, understand the relationship between us, know much of the God's mighty power,...although I could not so far ask Him to reveal all these in front of me.

The only thing that confused me too much now is the contradiction between the spiritual world and the reality, and I need to learn more about this, when accessing the website you provided to me the other day for a small learning once a week.

Sometimes, I have confused myself with understanding of natural science and feeling of the spiritual world. Like the fire Mike faced recently, I know Mike is a great religious guy, but he still has to suffer the fire accident and has to live in his aunt's house. Something like fire, car accident, frauds, sickness, earthquake etc. etc. you face in reality, will never leave you alone and stop to hurt you , even if you pray, you trust and you believe that the God will come and help you!

....this is the reason why I was thinking the other day that I may give up my current job and walk away from my daily chaos, then to go to some quiet place or church or religious academy to focus or concentrate on learning, thinking of the God, praying God, etc.

Do you have any place or people who can help to find me a place to start my religious belief, without thinking of making money making a life or supporting a family at all?

Response back to friend:

[Name], I was somewhat surprised and a bit concerned by your email. Please promise me you will not make any quick decisions about your job until a better understanding of what I have been writing about is obtained. I will continue to pray about your stress at work and also for your understanding of spiritual reality. I would like to focus on the area of concern in your email about bad things happening to people who become Christians that causes them to suffer. This is a common question asked by people who have experienced comfort in life because of their relative wealth. They feel that when making a commitment to God that he should protect them from harm and provide a comfortable life for them. I will try to bring this into focus for you and show that this is not what the Bible teaches.

Begin with Jesus Christ who was sent to earth by God the Father to live a perfect life for the purpose of dying on the cross in payment of our sin so that we could experience forgiveness and receive eternal life. Jesus suffered and died to purchase our salvation. Just as sinful men caused Jesus to suffer and die they probably will cause his followers to experience the same. In many countries throughout the world Christians are dying for their faith. By the blood of Jesus we gained our salvation and in many ways it is by our blood that the church is growing. Here in America where we do not suffer for our faith the church is dying and not having a positive influence on our culture. In countries where Christians are suffering you also find amazing growth in Christianity. Through persecution and suffering in the house church movement in China, Christianity is rapidly expanding.

Another aspect of suffering comes from the effects of sin on our environment and on us as people. God told us in the beginning not to eat the fruit from the tree of good and evil. If we did we would experience evil and the many effects of dying. Out of this curse of sin comes all kinds of natural disasters, famines, sickness, accidents, fires like Mike experienced, trials in our lives, etc. In regard to our suffering the apostle Paul says, “For I consider that our present sufferings cannot even be compared to the coming glory that will be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18 NET). God uses trials and suffering we experience to conform us into the image of his Son.

Since I have started the series on the Romans Road I need to continue with it, but I think a series on suffering and its importance in the life of a Christian should be the following series.