In the very first verse of scripture, Genesis 1:1, Moses wrote that God created the heavens and the earth. As the creation story unfolds, God calls forth light and darkness; day and night; the sun, moon and stars; the earth and the seas; the plants, and all the living creatures that swim, walk and fly; and he brought forth the first man and first woman.

“God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31a ESV).

In the paradise he made for human beings to occupy, God’s creation was only good.

“And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” (Genesis 2:9 ESV).

“And the Lord God commanded the man, saying ‘You may surely eat of every tree in the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat…” (2:16-17a).

When God gave Adam the first rule, he also gave him the first “choice” – to obey or not to obey. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil was just like any other tree in the garden, as long as Adam obeyed God’s only commandment, and did not taste its fruit. As long as Adam’s choice was to obey God, the creation surrounding Adam remained very good.

But when Eve and then Adam chose to disregard God’s commandment and partake of the only thing in the garden that was forbidden them, the paradise that God created for them was lost and they fell into another world. They could no longer live in a reality where everything was only good, because suddenly, within them now resided not only the knowledge of good, but also of evil.

As soon as Adam and Eve had eaten the fruit, they realized that they were naked, and for the first time they experienced shame, and hurried to cover themselves.

Then they heard God walking in the garden, and for the first time they experienced guilt, and rushed to hide.

When God asked them what they had done, for the first time, they pointed fingers of blame.

Scripture says that the tree from which God commanded Adam and Eve not to eat was called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It wasn’t that the tree bore “evil fruit,” but that eating the fruit from that tree would give the eater a specific kind of knowledge.

Can you see that once Adam and Eve made the choice to disobey God, the knowledge of evil entered their hearts and sin itself immediately began to multiply? 

As they moved further into sin, they moved further away from intimacy with God until it became necessary for God to remove them from their original location.

Paul wrote about his personal struggle with sin in Romans chapter 7, and The Message translation puts it this way:

“Don’t you remember how it was? I do, perfectly well. The law code started out as an excellent piece of work. What happened, though, was that sin found a way to pervert the command into a temptation, making a piece of ‘forbidden fruit’ out of it. The law code, instead of being used to guide me, was used to seduce me. Without all the paraphernalia of the law code, sin looked pretty dull and lifeless, and I went along without paying much attention to it. But once sin got its hands on the law code and decked itself out in all that finery, I was fooled, and fell for it. The very command that was supposed to guide me into life was cleverly used to trip me up, throwing me headlong. So sin was plenty alive, and I was stone dead. But the law code itself is God’s good and common sense, each command sane and holy counsel” (Romans 7:8-11).

God specifically cautioned Adam that on the day he ate of the forbidden fruit he would surely die in Genesis 2:17, and Romans 6:23 confirms that the result of sin is death.

When satan, the enemy of our souls, deceived Adam and Eve into breaking God’s only commandment, he seduced them and all the generations after them into a condition of “sin-death” that has corrupted everything around us. As a result of their choice to disobey God, Adam and Eve were banished from paradise into a world that was ruined and broken by sin.

That is the world that we occupy today.

It is not the world that God originally designed to house his creation. However, it has been allowed to continue by God, in order that we would have a classroom within which to learn the knowledge of both good and evil and the struggle that exists between them as two opposing principles.

Shortly after the fall, Adam and Eve had two sons, Cain and Abel. In the course of time, both sons of Adam brought offerings to the Lord. God accepted Abel’s offering but rejected the offering of Cain, and Cain was very angry (Genesis 4).

God said to Cain, “…’Why are you angry…? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must rule over it’” (4:6-7 ESV).

Soon afterward, jealous Cain murdered his innocent brother Abel.

This pattern of God presenting mankind with a choice between good and evil and the tendency of human beings to reject God’s will and choose evil has repeated itself since the time of the fall.

Over the years I have heard people respond to the question of why God allows sin and suffering with the answer that when God created human beings, he created us with free will so that ultimately we could make the choice to love and obey God of our own volition and not as automatons. God endowed us with free will, so that we would use our free will to choose God’s way over satan’s way. And this answer is true. God did endow us with the power to choose, and his desire is for us to choose him out of a pure heart.

However, we must put that understanding in context.

Because of the choice made by Adam and Eve and their subsequent fall, every human being since then has been born into a world that is designed to highlight the struggle between good and evil.

Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit because they wanted something that they did not have, and that something was knowledge. The knowledge not just of unpolluted good, but the knowledge of both good and evil. Therefore, in response to their desire for that knowledge, God created this world to be a classroom and in this classroom the knowledge we gain is not just an idea or a concept. In it we come to understand the interplay of the forces of good and evil through hard-won experience. Because the knowledge that Adam and Eve chose to pursue was real, the experience required to gain it must also be real and therefore we experience the effects of sin directly.

But please keep in mind that even though the world we occupy is broken and the lessons are difficult, God has not left us alone and he hasn’t left us as orphans. He knows that in this world we will have tribulation, but he has already given us his plan to overcome the world and he helps us to endure through trials and suffering.

“No test or temptation that comes your way is beyond the course of what others have had to face. All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; he’ll never let you be pushed past your limit; he’ll always be there to help you come through it” (1 Corinthians 10:13 MSG).

We will continue in Part Three.

One of the big questions people ask about God is “Why does a loving God allow pain, suffering and evil to exist in the world?” Or, when faced with an insurmountable tragedy a suffering person may ask, “Why did God allow this to happen to me and my loved ones?”

Why do bad things happen to good people? And why don’t bad things happen to bad people? Where is God when bad things happen? Can an all-powerful God still be loving when he allows people to suffer?

Beloved Friends, it isn’t wrong to ask these kinds of questions. God wants us to come to him and ask about everything that concerns us. Jesus said, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened” (Matthew 7:7-8 ESV).

God wants us to seek him and he invites our questions. Even the hard ones. He not only wants us to ask and seek but when we do, he also wants to give us answers. Most often his answers come to us as direct revelation through his Word. Sometimes he reveals his truths through pastors, teachers, friends and counselors. Many times, his answers unfold only through time and experience and require the application of our patience to bloom into wisdom. As we mature, we realize that God’s answers are deeper and wider than we ever imagined as over the years he reveals more and more of his character to us.

In this series, we will explore some of these difficult questions, and the plan that God put in place from before the beginning of the world to help us cope with suffering in our lives today.

As Jesus said to his disciples, “…I’ve told you all this so that trusting me, you will be unshakable and assured, deeply at peace. In this godless world you will continue to experience difficulties. But take heart! I’ve conquered the world” (John 16:33b MSG).

Please stay tuned for Part Two.

All of us here at Speak Comfort want to say thank you so very much to you, our readers, who fellowship, worship, and study with us. Our first year has been wonderful because of you.  We love each one of you. It is such a blessing and privilege to be part of your lives in this way.

My precious friend Jeanette and I could not have built and tended this beautiful site without our extremely talented web development team. We thank God for their expert help every day. We are constantly amazed by everything they do behind the scenes to make this work.

Our aim and prayer are to bring you the best possible content.  We hope to create some wonderful additions during the next few months, so please stay tuned!

Above all else, we give praise and thanks to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for every blessing that he pours into every one of our lives. Our desire is to serve you for his glory.

We pray for you every day, in Jesus’ name!

The Lord bless you and keep you;

 the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;

 the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.

(Numbers 6:24-26 ESV)

Elijah is one of the most famous prophets of the Old Testament. 1 Kings chapter 18 tells the story of how he called on God to defeat the prophets of Baal who served the wicked Queen Jezebel and King Ahab. When Elijah called on God saying, “’Answer me, O Lord, answer me, that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back [to you]’” (1 Kings 18:37 ESV), God sent fire from heaven to obliterate the altar Elijah built on Mount Carmel while all of Israel stood by, amazed.

After this great victory which caused the Israelites to abandon pagan worship and proclaim “’The Lord, he is God; the Lord, he is God!’” (1 Kings 18:39 ESV), the enraged Jezebel vowed to murder God’s prophet. Exhausted from his mighty labors, Elijah fled into the wilderness and hid himself under a broom tree, crying out to God, “…’It is enough, now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am not better than my fathers’” (1 Kings 19:1-4 ESV).

Have you ever been so worn out from serving that even after experiencing a wonderful success you were just too tired to go on and felt that you wanted to quit? Have you ever cried out to God and said, “Lord, I love you, but I just can not handle another thing”? Or maybe simply cried out, “Help me, Jesus!” when you felt you couldn’t manage to take another step in the direction the Lord was leading you?

If so, Beloveds, you are not alone. Think of Elijah, who suffered from prophetic burn-out; Naomi, the mother-in-law who wanted to change her name to “bitterness” (Ruth 1:20); John the Baptist, losing his cool before he lost his head in prison (Matthew 11:1-6); and Martha, who worked her fingers to the bone, threw her sister Mary under the bus and fussed at Jesus for being so hard to serve (Luke 10:38-42). Even Solomon, the most powerful king and wisest man in the world, wrote the book of Ecclesiastes to remind us that though there is a time for everything in its season, nevertheless life is full of vanity and there’s nothing new under the sun.

But listen, here’s how God responded to Elijah’s desperate plea:

“And [Elijah] lay down and slept under a broom tree. And behold, an angel touched him and said to him, ‘Arise and eat.’ And he looked, and behold, there was at his head a cake baked on hot stones and a jar of water. And he ate and drank and lay down again” (1 Kings 19:5-6 ESV).

God sent an angel from heaven with a hot meal and plenty of fresh water, and after Elijah ate and then slept for a while, God sent the angel again…

“And the angel of the Lord came again a second time and touched him and said, ‘Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you.’  And he arose and ate and drank, and went in the strength of that food forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mount of God (v. 7-8).

Beloved Friends, God knows that there will be times when the journey is too hard for us to manage. When the broken roads we sometimes travel seem too long and full of potholes, God wants us to come to him to be nourished and refreshed.

Our Creator knows that it’s important for us to make time to eat and rest. We need spiritual food that we find in the Word of God, and we also need earthly food. We need spiritual rest and we need earthly rest.

As Jesus walked beside the sea of Galilee, a great multitude of the lame, blind and sick came to him to be healed. “Then Jesus called his disciples to him and said, ‘I have compassion on the crowd because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat. And I am unwilling to send them away hungry, lest they faint on the way’…and Jesus said to them, ‘How many loaves do you have?’ They said, ‘Seven, and a few small fish’…he took the seven loaves and the fish, and having given thanks he broke them and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And they all ate and were satisfied. And they took up seven baskets full of the broken pieces left over” (Matthew 15:32,34,36-37 ESV).

Of course, this story of the miracle of Jesus feeding four thousand men, in addition to women and children, with just a few loaves and fishes is a Bible study all its own. But notice here that Jesus took the earthly bread that his followers brought to him and through it manifested heavenly food for the crowds. Jesus pulled bread from the storerooms of heaven to feed his people. God sent an angel with bread and water to feed his prophet Elijah.

God is the source of our heavenly food and our earthly food, and he wants to provide for us everything we need to strengthen us for the journey ahead. He knows that earthly life can be difficult and that sometimes it is too hard for us to handle.

But Jesus said, “I am unwilling to send them away hungry, lest they faint on the way.”

Jesus is the Word of God, and the Word of God is fresh bread and pure water, straight from heaven, that nourishes our souls and our spirits.

God created the heavens and the earth and all that is in them, and he gives us all good things to enjoy (1 Timothy 6:17).

So when you feel exhausted, like Elijah; or you’re starting to feel a little bitter, like Naomi; or you want to blame everybody around you because you’re working too hard, like Martha, it’s time to stop, eat a good meal and get some rest. Then pick up your Bible and let God feed your spirit. Jesus doesn’t want to send us away hungry. He wants us to be strong and rested for the journey, because he doesn’t want us to miss out on any of the treasures that he has hidden for us along the way. After all, Elijah ultimately got to take a ride in God’s chariot (2 Kings 2:11).

But even with all the miracles he witnessed, what he really needed to keep going was a snack and a nap.

The twenty fifth chapter of Matthew’s gospel begins like this: ‘“Then the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise”’ (v. 1-2 ESV).

Doesn’t that sound like the beginning of a very exciting story? It certainly is, and one of the things that make this parable of the wise and foolish virgins especially thrilling is that Jesus told it to his disciples as an illustration of what he had prophesied would happen at the end of days as told in Matthew chapter 24.

Even though because of the chapter headings the prophecy and parables seem to stand alone, they are really part of one continuous dialog. The parables that Jesus taught in Matthew 25 were told to illustrate the prophecy recorded in Matthew 24.

Notice that verse 1 of chapter 25 opens with the word “Then.” This indicates that Jesus is prophesying not only about his own time, but also about a future time. These parables in fact were written as a warning and admonition not only to Israel of Jesus’ day but for the Church in ours. They provide us with a roadmap for behavior as the Body of Christ in the final days of the 2000-year Church Age.

 Jesus begins the parable of the wise and foolish virgins by telling us that all the virgins were going to meet the bridegroom. The Church Universal is the Bride of Christ as described in Ephesians 25:22,28b, 32: “For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior…He who loves his wife loves himself. This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.” (ESV). Therefore, the Bridegroom that the virgins in the parable were waiting for was Jesus, himself.

He recounted that the five foolish virgins had their lamps but took no oil with them, but the five wise virgins had flasks full of oil for their lamps (25:4). Proverbs 20:27 tells us that the spirit of a man is the lamp of the Lord, but it isn’t really the lamp itself that illuminates, but the flame, that is fed by the oil that is in the lamp. The lamp is a vessel for the oil, and the oil provides the fuel for the illuminating fire.

The Church is the vessel that is intended to be filled with the oil of the Holy Spirit that sustains the passionate flame of God’s love for his eternal Bride.

“As the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and slept. But at midnight there was a cry, ‘Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps.  And the foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’  But the wise answered, saying, ‘Since there will not be enough for us and for you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.’  And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came, and those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was shut” (Matthew 25:5-10 ESV).

The foolish virgins didn’t understand that they couldn’t “borrow” the Holy Spirit from the wise, nor could they “purchase” him in the marketplace. They had not personally received the infilling of the Holy Spirit directly from heaven, and so their lamps were going out. They couldn’t sustain the fire of their love for God “with their own oil” or in their own strength.

“Afterward the other virgins came also, saying, ‘Lord, lord, open to us.’ But he answered, ‘Truly, I say to you, I do not know you’” (25:11).

After the Last Supper and before his arrest in the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus told his disciples that he would send another Comforter, the Spirit of Truth, to abide with us forever. He also stated that his disciples would know the Holy Spirit because he would come to live within us, but that the world would neither receive him nor know him (John 14:16-17).

When we become fascinated by and filled with the things of the world, we don’t leave any room in our lamps for the Holy Spirit, and without his abiding presence, the blaze of God’s love cannot continuously burn within us. Our spirits are simply too weak to sustain the fiery power of his love for us. We must have the Holy Spirit, married to our spirits, so that our lamps are continuously filled with precious oil.

The parable concludes with Jesus instructing his disciples to “Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour” (v. 13).

We don’t know the day or the hour that the call will sound that the Bridegroom is coming for his Bride. But even if that call comes in the middle of a dark night, and even if we have fallen asleep while we are waiting if we are filled with the oil of the Holy Spirit, when the Light of the World calls us home we will be ready to meet him.