God's Glory Church

Many people are sad today. They are upset about what is happening in the country and their powerlessness to somehow influence what is happening. We are upset about politicians who continue to sell everything and everyone and do business even on people’s blood. We are upset by the lack of understanding on the part of loved ones who find themselves on the other side of the borders drawn between countries and people through the false propaganda of television. And even more people, especially believers, are upset with God, because He is to blame for everything and allows all this…

“And God saw their deeds, that they turned from their evil way, and God regretted the disaster which He had said He would bring upon them, and did not bring it. Jonah was greatly grieved by this and was irritated” (Jonah 3:10-4:1).
How familiar this is to us. God promised and failed to deliver, gave His word and then rescinded it. Well, isn’t this a betrayal? Here I too would be upset, not like God’s prophet. But what really was the reason for Jonah’s grief and why are we most often upset today? God disrupted his plans and showed mercy to the people, rather than punishing them, as Jonah had hoped, and this seemed “unfair” to him. Our concept of justice and our understanding of how it should really be is one of the most common reasons for grief and resentment towards our neighbor and even towards God Himself.

Grief paralyzes and poisons our lives, it can make the grieved a fratricide, like Cain, and it also makes us wrong in the eyes of God, since we begin to teach the Lord what He should do and what He should not do.

“See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God; Lest any root of bitterness spring up and cause harm, and thereby many become defiled” (Heb. 12:15).
It is so important for each of us to take care to be free from grief, to have a free heart. This is vital so that we can continue to follow God!

You always want to blame someone for all your problems: “It’s his fault that I feel so bad and hurt!” Don’t look for the guilty. Don’t demand something from others, demand it from yourself. It is our personal responsibility to be free from grief.

And let’s take a little look at those who are really suffering today and need our compassion, prayers and help, but not our grief. Here are the words of an eyewitness to what is happening today in the east of our country:

“The war had to happen as a natural indicator that revealed how much rot was and is in our society.
Only a leper, when he loses a part of his body, does not feel pain. Only a sick society, losing part of a united country, does not empathize and does not try to regain what was lost. When a person’s hand hurts, he can’t think of anything else, and does everything to remove the source of pain. But people who call themselves Ukrainians, spouting patriotic slogans in small talk, from or at TV screens, do not feel pain at all, pain for their brothers, for the land which is trampled by a foreign boot, or the boot of a local person with a damaged mind.

I’m writing because it’s boiling. Yesterday, DPR members who sympathize with us reported that my name was on their list at checkpoints. And a week ago, at the Yasinovatsky checkpoint, two people who were returning to their city for winter things were detained and then shot. They were killed only because they had something to do with the Batkivshchyna party and their names were on the lists.
My friends who visited the dungeons of the DPR and NKVD saw with their own eyes how every day someone was killed, maimed, beaten to death, and at the same time the executioners did not hide the pleasure they received from the torture they carried out. And our rulers are negotiating with these people?

We need to talk with those who remained in the occupation and at the same time did not break, but continue to serve the people. With those who wander throughout Ukraine for months and cannot return home, because their names are on the lists, and their hometown will greet them not with the welcoming smiles of friends and acquaintances, but with death fired from the machine gun of a half-drunk sadistic mercenary. Negotiations must be conducted with the mothers of those who lost their sons, and then the rulers will hear the correct answer – this is not why we lost a lot, so that marginal traitors and senile red people would dictate how Ukraine should live.
But until the pain of Donbass becomes the pain of an ordinary person, until people seek God, until then we will suffer defeats in the hope of generals and corrupt officials. The new Ukraine is not made by the president and deputies, but by ordinary people of high spirit who do not stand aside.” Pastor Sergei Kosyak.

Don’t be sad, be grateful and serve others!