{"id":7710,"date":"2018-02-18T20:50:03","date_gmt":"2018-02-19T02:50:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.twocities.org\/?p=7710"},"modified":"2018-02-18T20:50:03","modified_gmt":"2018-02-19T02:50:03","slug":"why-do-we-allow-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/?p=7710","title":{"rendered":"WHY DO WE ALLOW IT?!"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><strong>From Pastor Mike Woodruff:<\/strong><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><strong>Years ago, while traveling in troubled parts of Africa with Tim Dearborn \u2013 then a senior member of World Vision\u2019s leadership team \u2013 I wondered why God allowed so much suffering. Dearborn reframed the question, asking why we allow it. He noted that if Christians gave\u00a0ten percent of their income away, which he argued was a starting point, we could: 1) Wipe out extreme poverty; 2) Provide a 6<sup>th<\/sup>grade education to everyone; 3) Provide clean water to everyone; and 4) Double every church budget and double every mission budget in the world and still have hundreds of billions of dollars left over.\u00a0He argued back then that the question is not: when is God going to provide, or when are we going to be generous, but when are we going to be faithful and obedient?\u00a0<\/strong><\/div>\n<div><strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/div>\n<div><strong>I called Tim last week to see if he wanted to update his thinking. He said the numbers still hold, and then observed\u00a0that there were four things that got the Jews in trouble during the Old Testament era: 1) a failure to circumcise; 2) a failure to tithe; 3) a failure to keep the Sabbath; and 4) a failure to welcome the stranger. He argues that these were all issues of trust. In every situation they (we) were being asked to give something up something they did not want to give up. With circumcision \u2013 well, there is no desire to give up anything on that front. With the tithe, it\u2019s money. With the Sabbath, it\u2019s time, and with our home, it\u2019s control \/ privacy. On all four fronts, obedience protects us from idolatry and helps us learn to trust God<\/strong>.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From Pastor Mike Woodruff: Years ago, while traveling in troubled parts of Africa with Tim Dearborn \u2013 then a senior member of World Vision\u2019s leadership team \u2013 I wondered why God allowed so much suffering. Dearborn reframed the question, asking why we allow it. He noted that if Christians gave\u00a0ten percent of their income away, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,43,63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7710","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible","category-christianity","category-poor"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7710"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7711,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7710\/revisions\/7711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.twocities.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}