Shaul (Paul) wrote a couple of letters to a young and relatively inexperienced Messianic Kehillot leader called Timothy. The intent of these letters was to encourage and support Timothy in leading men that were older and somewhat uncomfortable to being managed, so to speak, by someone much younger than they were.

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In the second letter, Shaul told Timothy this:

For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.

In other words, stand your ground and don’t allow yourself to be pushed around, but at the same time, be loving, gentle, and humble. And most of all, trust in God and have faith that he will make things work out in the long run.

I have been around the block more than once, and have known many people whose weak faith, or lack thereof, makes them afraid of many things, especially of the loss of people they care for.

This fear of loss controls them, and they become afraid to get close, either in friendly or intimate relationships, because they have lost loved ones in the past.

When we lose someone we love, we never get “over” it, we just get “passed” it. We learn to live with the loss and continue with our lives.

That is what we are supposed to do, but many whom I have known have not been able to work through their loss, and what they end up doing is not getting as close to someone they love as they could. This isn’t because they really don’t like them, but quite the opposite: their love for them makes them fear losing them one day.

They figure like this: if I don’t get so close to this person, then it won’t hurt as bad when they die.

Well, there seems to be some logic to that, but in reality what that attitude results in is that they have already lost that person.

The fear of losing them has reduced the ability to get the most joy out of being with them!

If you ask me, that’s just meshuggah!

Everyone dies, we all suffer the loss of loved ones, and the only thing that remains are the memories we have of the times we were with them. If you ask me, the best way to make losing someone easier to handle is to know, absolutely, that I got the most out of being with them while I could.

The more memories we have, the better it will be, and when someone refuses to regularly get together with friends, or to reduce the level of intimacy with a spouse or partner, or some other form of physical and emotional “cocooning”, that fear of loss is making them lose out right now.

I believe the reason there is so much fear in people, especially the fear of loss, is that they don’t have anything else to fall back on. Not that anyone or anything can replace someone we love, but if we have a deep and abiding faith in God, and trust that he is in charge, we can be comforted and not so fearful because we know he is doing what is best for those who are faithful to him.

But what about those we love who have a weak faith? Or maybe aren’t saved? Or maybe don’t even want to be saved? What about them? If I know that God will not accept into his presence someone who has not atoned for their sins, through Messiah Yeshua, then how can I not feel terrible about their passing?

You will feel terrible for those who you care for and know are not saved, but that is part of living. My parents were never religious, and I know that my father would have refused, had he been conscious, to accept Yeshua on his deathbed. So while he lay comatose, I prayed for him, trying to intercede, but I have to say I am not sure what the result of that will be. So what do I do? I trust in God, and accept that not everyone I care about will be saved. It sucks, but that’s the way it is. After all, when Yeshua said it was the road less traveled and the narrow gate, he wasn’t kidding.

Many people, and maybe even many of the people we care about, will not be in God’s presence throughout eternity, and that is a fact of life (or should I say a fact of afterlife?) that we must accept.

So what do I do? I try to make the most of what ever relationships I have now, so that later I can look back without regret, knowing that I was able to get the most out of my friendships, my family, and especially my marriage.

The last thing I want to feel when I think about someone I cared for who has passed on is regret that I didn’t tell them how I felt about them, or spent as much time with them as could have, or (worse than anything else) not been as intimate and loving to them as I could have been.

So have faith in God that everything will be okay, and with that faith take hold of your relationships today and make the most you can out of them, because when they are gone, they are gone, forever.

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That’s it for today, so l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem!

There is just so much evil in the world, isn’t there? Murders, sexual assaults, invasions, drunk drivers killing innocent children, drug abuse, bullying…there’s seemingly no end to the ways people can do harm to other people.

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Yet, what is evil to some is not evil to others.

There are those who love to watch two people beat each other to death in a boxing ring, but deplore bullfighting in Spain.

There are some who find certain cultural activities horrible and sinful, but the culture that performs those activities finds them not just acceptable, but comforting!

When Satan, that old devil, was thrown out of heaven he didn’t go to hell, he went to the earth: there are biblical reference to this in Isaiah 14:12-14 and Ezekiel 28:12-18, and also Yeshua, himself, told us he saw Satan fall to earth in Luke 10:18.

Maybe that is why there is so much evil in the world- the originator of evil lives here! He has dominion over this world, and it shows, doesn’t it?

But what about God? Isn’t God in charge? Doesn’t God control everything and isn’t he more powerful than Satan?

Well, DUH! Of course he is! But, if so, then why does he allow this to happen? It’s the old question: “If God is a loving and compassionate God, who loves his children, how can he allow all of the suffering that we see in the world to continue?”

Right now Russia is attacking the Ukraine, people are leaving the homes and dying in battle, so why does God allow this?

I don’t know.

But I do know this- we cannot understand why God does what he does. In Ecclesiastes, the writer, Kohelet, states that everything is useless. He found everything he did under the sun to be a total waste of time, but why was that? It was because he did it to understand why God does what God does! That is why he found everything to be useless- we cannot understand God. If you remember, he said (no less than three times) that the best we can do is eat, drink, and enjoy the things that God has provided for us, concluding that fear of the LORD (i.e., proper worship) is the beginning of wisdom.

And what about Job? Here was a totally innocent, righteous, God-fearing man who was considered by God to be the most righteous man on earth, yet God allowed so much tsouris to befall him. God allowed Satan to first take away all his children and property, then to take away his health. How could God, who knew how righteous and obedient Job was, cause him to suffer the way he did?

I don’t know.

And I am not even going to go through the suffering God’s own chosen people had to endure during the Holocaust!

Why? Why this evil? Why this suffering? Why does God allow it?

(You know what I am going to say.)

I suppose we should try to come up with an answer, and when I think about it, I realize it may actually be as simple as this: without suffering, there can be no joy.

In Romans 5:13, Shaul tells us that, “Sin was indeed present in the world before Torah was given, but sin is not counted as such when there is no Torah.”  In other words, without the Torah to identify exactly what was sinful and what was righteous, we couldn’t really be certain of either.

So, in the same way, without suffering and evil, we can’t really appreciate what is joyful and good.

Here’s a personal example: my wife tells me that growing up, her mother wasn’t the best cook in the world, and Donna said she never realized how good food could taste until she was working in the city and going to restaurants that served delicious food.

Another example is when you have been driving your car for years, and you are so comfortable in it. You love that car! Then, one day you have to leave it with a garage and they give you a year model loaner. WOW! All of a sudden you say to yourself, “My car stinks!”

Until we do something different, we can never know how good or bad we have it, now.

As a species, we become inured to the way we live. Even growing up in poverty or a war-torn country, we don’t know anything else. It’s not until we experience something better that we realize how terrible out lives were. Yet- remarkable as this may seem- many times even after living a better life, we miss the old life because it is what we feel comfortable with.

I read a book once called “The Dance of Anger” and it said how in bad relationships, because we become used to the interactions, when one of the members tries to better the situation, the other one will go out of their way to return things to the bad relationship. Why? Because that person became used to it, they were inured to the evil and felt uncomfortable when things started to change.

I guess that God allows evil in the world because without the evil, we can’t appreciate all the good that God can do, and does for us.

You know, when I think about it a little more, the evil can be useful to us because it is so terrible, that to avoid it we must stay obedient to God. In Deuteronomy 28, God promises blessings for those who are obedient to his instructions; so, even with the in-born iniquity (desire to sin) that we all have, the prevalence of evil all around us throughout our lives may actually provide incentive for us to be more righteous.

As silly as it may sound, the evil in this world might just scare us into being more obedient to God if, for other reason, self-protection.

So, nu? I don’t have an exact answer to why God allows evil in the world, but I think we can conclude that there are two things we can be sure of:

1– We will never know why God does the things he does, or allows the things he allows, but we must trust that he knows what he is doing; and
2– Although evil is all around us, God will protect us when we are obedient to his instructions and act in accordance with his will.

Thank you for being here and please subscribe to this ministry, on both the website and my YouTube channel (they are different lists but I never sell any names). Also, while on the website consider buying my books- if you like what you get here, you will like my books, as well.

Share these messages with everyone you know, join my Facebook group called “just God’s Word” (please read and agree to the rule), and remember that I always welcome your comments.

That’s it for today, so l’hitraot and Baruch HaShem.