WHAT GOOD IS GOD?

What difference does God make?  Is this faith stuff legit?  Are there elements to life that really do come about due to His engagement and involvement in our lives?

These are significant questions.  We live in such a time that we need answers.  Religion on it's surface can seem confusing, even repulsive, to oh so many.  Therefore, I'm curious as to whether a solution might be found if our perspective could be slightly adjusted.

What good is God?  What is it He does...actually?  Why should one bother to seek Him; to invest in Him?  Or, is this a mere imaginary concept within man's nature to develop something beyond fathomability which we may have invented on our own...our own god?

In so many places God doesn't sell well these days.  It isn't because of an increase in crime.  Neither is the decline in morality to be the blame.  I believe the light in the church has dimmed.  And, why would (or could) this be the case?  Has the brightness intended by God actually reached that hidden under a bushel (basket) position that Jesus referenced?

Here's my take; which admittedly is only one person's opinion.  Yet, I care very much about the church and our neighbors.

I believe we have subtly reduced the brilliant message of Heaven to earth by programming into faithful attenders that the big difference God makes is that when one dies, if these have done everything right, they will go to Heaven; not Hell.  This is a significant and costly error.

Let this doctrine stand alone as the main emphasis of a believer's thrust and there will be immediate disengagement with our neighbors.  Our drive, from such a hope-I-go-to-Heaven-when-its-over, has become one very self-inclined thread.  Oh, others are a fine sort; but we have no passion nor compassion for them if our main personal drive is to make sure we move Heavenward, not Hellward, when we take our last breath.

With this doctrinal error at the forefront of our church habit, even the power of God is reduced.  We don't need Him to operate in our dailiness since we do believe that Jesus died for our sins and that there really is a Heaven.  Other than that we become obsessed with church attendance as the marker of a good Christian without confidence or even the need for God to function.

This leaves God out of our day by day lives.  Yet, we surely need Him.  We need Him to rescue us day by day.  He is the critical element in our message to our colleagues and neighbors.  It is God  who is to be loved; not our behavioral church skill-set.  It is God who brings about wonder and awe.

What good is God?  He.  Is.  Life.  Abundant.  Right.  Now.  Without Him, we are big bags of wind who annoy the daylights out of our communities.  With Him we introduce joy to the sorrows, patience to the worried, and hope to the devastated....now...not someday...but right now.