December 2019 – HolyWord.com

When it comes to living our lives and making decisions, we are often doing good things but also do some bad things, commit sins, and if we had to do it again, might change how we reacted. Does God know all of this and what does that mean for me?One of the attributes of God is that He is all-knowing, without limits. This reveals that He has the ability to create the very universe itself,, with everything in it, including us, and knowing what we are thinking. He knows us well and knows our thoughts. This can be a good thing for us if we see the opportunities, and we'll talk about that here. Can Something that is Not All-Knowing Be the Creator of everything? How can we say God is all-knowing? We can look back thousands of years and see what beliefs occur when people attribute limitations to gods with their beliefs. It results in polytheism or no belief at all. In Polytheism, there were multiple gods. No one god was all-powerful and all-knowing. They had power over limited realms. As a result, they were often at odds with each other, fighting over limited resources and often mimicking the actions of petty people. Greeks and Romans eventually realized they were false ideas. They could not be the origination of everything in creation.Or No God At All. When people create limited ideas of a god with human thoughts, human limitations, and negative attributes, then it is easy to discount such a false idea and not believe at all. God is All-Knowing. There are various ways to reach the conclusion that God is all-knowing. We won't go into all that depth here, but here is an article about God as the initial 'Cause' which can be approached through reasoning, and here is a video. Here we will talk about what this means for you and me in our lives. Most of the time when this question is brought up, it is about someone's sins and how uncomfortable we are when someone else knows we did something wrong. God is not limited to the Universe How Does This Make Me Feel About Sins? Everyone commits sins. Sorry, but there is no getting around it. We know inside in our conscience. While some people can erode their conscience through habitual sins, for the most part, we know when we have done something wrong. When we find out that God knows about our sins, our immediate reaction may be to try to and hide, avoiding church, avoiding other people, skipping prayer, or ignoring thoughts about God altogether. It makes us feel uncomfortable.We may even feel like no one, not even God, has the right to know our thoughts. We rebel from God. The actual cause of this uncomfortableness is not God. It is our choice to follow sin and move away from God. We created a distance between us and God, and are trying to keep Him from coming too near. Distrust is Not Love This reaction of distrust is the opposite of true love. In a good marriage where husband and wife are close to one another, they often share their thoughts in a loving trust of one another. God's love is even more trust-worthy and a perfected form of Love. The Bible The Bible has many references to God as All-Knowing. God knows us very well and gives us the events of Adam and Eve because they are so much like us, committing sin, and immediately moving away from God so that He does not find out what they did. The Old Testament and New are filled with this recurring theme of sinners fleeing from God in one way or another. We use different means today to avoid God. We use different means today to avoid God, but it is the same problem. We don't want God to be near us when we sin and we go the other way. Today, people will often work too much and then say they don't have any time to pray to God.Other people will have addictions, where they try to fill a vid with various pleasures, but the pleasures are only temporary and the void remains or gets bigger the further they move away from God and others. How Does This Make Me Feel About Good Things? We should also be aware that we do many good things. This should not be for our own pride, but to be honest with ourselves. Someone who goes to school or work each day, or stays at home to prepare for the needs of the family, doing their best, these are inherently good things that build up individuals, the family, and society. There was even garden cultivation in the garden before sin, so a certain amount of work is good for us and we shouldn't be ignorant of that.We shouldn't only focus on the negative. There is Good News There is some really good news about God knowing our thoughts, good and bad. He can help us.In Genesis 3:15, despite their sin, it was not the end. Adam and Eve were not given over to the Devil for eternal punishment but instead put into an ongoing spiritual battle with him. There would be enmity between the Devil and them and their offspring. The good news is that God is not simply a bystander watching from afar. It may seem that way when we don't listen to Him, when we sin, and when we try to do things ourselves. Without including God He can seem far away, but that is really because He is respecting our free will and not forcing us to do good.But having free-will also means we can choose to look towards God and ask for His help. Then He is not a bystander but can be a significant helper. The fact that He didn't send humans away for eternity and gives us more time in this world, means He is giving us extra opportunities. Once we learn that we can choose God, and accept his help, the good opportunities go through the roof. Dealing with Sin One of the consequences of sin is that it weighs us down and makes us weak. Without any help, we can get pulled into more and more sin, feeling weaker and weaker, getting further away from God, closer to the Devil and his temptations. But the Good News is that God, as the creator of the universe and all creatures, is infinitely higher than the Devil, a fallen angel, a creature. God is all-powerful and all-knowing. The Devil is not. We can always call upon God to help us at any time.One of the things God wants to help us with is to be cleansed from our sins so that we can be close to Him again. As in the story of the Prodigal son, He is there with arms wide open waiting for us to return and even gives us ways to help. Confessing our sins You might ask if God knows everything, why do we need to confess our sins? It is true that God knows everything, but he will often ask people to perform a real action to prove it to themselves. God often asked people questions in the Bible to get them to answer it for their own benefit. Then it was no longer just a random internal thought. Once it was verbalized it was a rational choice of their free will witnessed in the world. Their faith would grow by confessing the truth about God. Someone who only confesses sins silently in their hearts often has difficulty forgiving themselves. Once they sin again, it all comes back and they can pile on the guilt including the past sins. Jesus knew this and immediately after His Ressurection, asked the Apostles to forgive or not to forgive others. The latter part of the verse is revealing as one cannot decide to hold someone's sins bound unless they knew what those sins were (a verbal confession) and if the person was sorry (requires some discussion and discernment) This is the basis for physical confession, sometimes called reconciliation, as it helps us to reconcile with God. From personal experience, when confessing sins to a priest, following those instructions of what Jesus asked the Church to do, the sins that are verbally confessed, and verbally forgiven are truly gone, for a clean fresh start. The verbal confession helps to fully realize God's forgiveness in a way that I don't by myself. It feels great! Because God knows what we are thinking, knows our sins, can help us when we want His help, and provides ways for us to cleanse ourselves from sins, it is really a good thing that He knows our thoughts and provides for us. We can learn from our mistakes We may look at this life as a training ground for eternal life. We are getting extra chances to try and improve. It could have been 1 sin and the end, but instead, God gives us ample opportunity to improve and learn from our sins and mistakes. The most important lesson is to trust in God and flee from sinNot to turn towards sin and flee from God. Does God Judge? It is true that God is without sin and does not accept sin. While we are sinning we are apart from Him. We may feel like we are being judged, but it is more a result of our free-will choosing something bad and the internal conscience God had given us to know it is bad. Guilt is often the consequence of sin, feeling apart from God, knowing we did something wrong. If we listen to our conscience and seek to restore our relationship with God, then it is good that guilt can move us back towards the right path. We judge ourselves and make a choice. But think about it, if God was fully judging us right now, there would be no extra chances. He is not acting with a final judgment yet. The Devil So where does this idea come from that God judges us now? The Devil wants us to believe God is judging us and for us to run away from Him. The further we run from God and the weaker we get, the more power the Devil has to tempt us and keep us there. Then one day, when our choices are up, and we have chosen to be away from God, the Devil can do whatever he wants to us. How come people rarely complain that the Devil is judging them? He always wants us to be in pain. And unfortunately, the Devil always judges negatively. He does not respect God's creation, especially humans. He wants us to focus on worrying about God judging us now, but in reality, he wants to have power over us for eternity so he can continually judge and torture us. It would be a travesty if we ignored all the opportunities God gives us and gets twisted into following the path that the Devil wants. I think C.S. Lewis put it correctly in the Screwtape Letters. Sometimes people forget the Devil is there and it is easy to be distracted away from lofty thoughts about God. We need to be alert. The Final Judgement Some believe when they die, that God will have a list of all the good things and evil things they did, make a final judgment, and they will be sent to heaven or hell. Another way to look at it is whether we have chosen to be with God. Even if someone does good throughout their life but they never trusted God and don't want to be with Him, it would be odd to think He would force them against their wills to be in heaven with Him for eternity. As a result, judgment is not simply a list of good and bad actions but our choice to trust God and want to be with him. For someone who took the opportunities in this life to trust God, follow His guidance, and accept His help, the easier it will be at the end of their life for the final judgment. For someone who never did, it will be harder. Where God's justice or mercy judges, that decision is up to Him. What Happens If We Are Not Perfect When We Die? A great many people may not be perfectly ready yet when they die. Maybe they kind of wanted to be with God but also had attachments to sins. In this world, maybe they followed some good opportunities God provided for them but also ignored others. They ended up in an imperfect state of grace with some sin left. To find out more about this you may continue reading Faith and Works and Purgatory. Can the Devil read our minds and judge our thoughts? Only God is all-knowing with the power to read our thoughts. The Devil is limited and only a created being. As a result, he does not have the power to read our internal thoughts. However, The Devil does have the ability to see what we are doing and our actions, so he knows what many of our sins are by observing and can tempt us knowing our weaknesses. We should also be aware that we can always call upon the Lord at any moment and He is far more powerful. God knows that the Devil is thinking, but the Devil does not know what God is thinking, so God is always far superior in knowledge and assistance to us, over evil. Jesus Death and Ressurection Jesus' death and Ressurection are the perfect examples of the Devil trying to harm us and defeat God, but ultimately losing the battle. The Devil is not even powerful enough to defeat an angel of God, Michael the arch-angel. It is Good that Good knows our thoughts and can help usIt is good that God knows our thoughts but the Devil does not, so God can always help.We have ample opportunities before the final judgment, including following Jesus and His guidance.We need to use our free wills to choose God because He will not force us.