"But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear:" 1 Peter 3:15 (KJV)
I don’t think that there is one person on this planet that will truly say “no” to the opportunity to see God. There is something in our hearts that cries out for that “something” that can fully satisfy our souls. People spend their entire lives looking for that satisfaction through jobs, careers, money, fame, relationships, etc. But in the end, in their secret place, they are fully aware of their emptiness.
We have become experts in putting on masks, but God can see beyond our masks. The reality is that without Christ in our lives we are empty. Even if you are born again; until you totally surrender every aspect of your life to Christ, you will be full of empty spots in your soul. We need the fullness of Christ in order to be able to enjoy that peace that goes beyond circumstances and that joy that can’t be explained.
God is not hiding from us! Even after Adam and Eve introduced sin into the humanity, God still went out looking for them in the cool of the day. It was Adam and Eve who hid from Him. Genesis 3:8 tells us:
“8 Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the LORD God called to the man, ‘Where are you?”
Many of us are still hiding from God; we pick and choose those areas where He is welcomed and those areas where He is not. I can here the Lord calling us from our shameful places: “Where are you?” The Lord wants to make us free! Jesus is waiting to release that abundant life that He came to give us according to John 10:10, but we are still hiding behind the trees of disappointments, betrayals, mistrusts, mistakes, failures, embarrassments and sins.
“The Main Reason Why we Suffer”
There is a song written by Don Porter that illustrates our desire to see God’s face better than any other song I know.
“14 Pursue peace with all people, and holiness, without which no one will see the Lord…” (Hebrews 12:14)
Beloved, the main reason why we suffer is because God wants us to be able to see Him. God is not hiding from us; but our sin and the evil conditions of our hearts stand in the way of the fulness of our intimacy with God.
Without holiness, we will not see the Lord. That is the reason why God allows us to go astray, He allows us to do it our way, to try our empty destructive ways of doing things; that is the reason why He manifests His love by disciplining us with great hardship, so that we may experience brokenness and find ourselves at the end of ourselves, so that we may have a heart of surrendering to Him, so that we may share in His holiness, so that we may see Him.
This whole thing is about God’s desire to bring us out from behind the trees of shame and into the place of walking with Him in the cool of the day. So then, who cares if I catch the bus, ride a bicycle, drive an old car or even drive a Mercedes or have my own plane…it is all about Jesus! Who cares then, if I suffer my whole life on this earth and dimension of life? What a small price to pay if at the end I can start my life for all eternity walking in the cool of the day with my heavenly Daddy.
Now suffering makes sense; now I can thank God for those that hurt me, for those that reject me, for those that discriminated against me just because of the color of my skin. What an amazing honor that God loved me so much that he manifested His love in such a way to get me to this point where now I can echo the words of the Psalmist when he said:
“It was good for me to be afflicted
so that I might learn your decrees.” (Psalm 119:71)
Yes! It is good that I experience tragedy, that my heart became exposed, that I messed up the way I did, that she treated me the way she did, that I faced that humiliation, that I got fired from this job, that they manifested their racist hearts against me, that I was insulted, that I faced that divorced, that she cheated on me and the list goes on and on…“It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees.”
Should I feel sorry about myself? Should I go around blaming the world? Psalm 119:67 tells us: “Before I was afflicted I went astray…” So, are you the exemption? Are you one that did everything right? Are there no sins in your life? You went astray just like the rest of us, but this verse ends by saying: “…but now I obey your word.” The Bible establishes very clearly that “there is not one good”; that includes you and me (Romans 3:12).
So perhaps, it is now time to stop using our sufferings as a free ticket to hurt others and engage in the entailment mentality and the welfare of self-pity. Arise people of God and celebrate; rejoice in your afflictions, for God is dealing with His bride and is preparing us for the wedding. Arise people of God, and look up, for our Lord is coming from the clouds. Cheer up beloved! All your pain and suffering will go away for:
“Weeping may endure for a night,
But joy comes in the morning.” (Psalm 30:5)
We must understand and have the revelation that whatever suffering we are facing currently it is just a temporary thing.
An independent thinker with a profound call to see the orthodoxy of the church and passion for Christ manifesting together. Angel was born in Brooklyn, New York in April of 1968, he was raised on the beautiful island of Puerto Rico where he earned his B.S. degree in Sociology with a minor in Education from the Inter American University in San Germán in 1991. That same year he moved to Jacksonville, Florida. After working construction jobs for a year and learning the English language, his first job working with foster-care children in the capacity of youth care worker was with Jacksonville Youth Sanctuary in September of 1992. With JYS he was promoted several times as group home supervisor, legal caseworker, and program director.
While in Jacksonville, Angel studied a couple of martial arts styles. After earning his black belt, he became the founder of Good Fight Ministries as he used martial arts as an instrument to preach the gospel. In 2004 Angel was selected Martial Arts Instructor of the Year for the State of Florida and in 2005 Angel was inducted in the USA Martial Arts Hall of Fame where he also received the Christian Spirit Award. In July of 2005 Angel accepted his call to pastor a bilingual church in Winton, NC where he served for a couple of years. Five months later he lost his first wife to cancer in December of that same year. This initiated a deep valley of suffering in his life, a mountain of costly mistakes and the embracing of lifestyles of sin that are well documented through this blog.
In August of 2012 Angel moved to Fairbanks Alaska with his wife Rayette Casiano and six children who are now adults. In Alaska, Angel continued his social work-related career and his ministry of preaching, teaching and writing. Angel is the author of two books, Hope for the divorcee: Forgiving and Moving Forward and 7 Banderas de Esperanza: La Bendición de Yokdzonot.
In January 8th of 2020 Angel and his wife moved to Arizona. On June 8th 2021 Angel started his home church, not as a starting point, but as a closer way to how the church is suppose to look like according to Scripture.
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