6. What Is a God of Travail?
In a successful attempt to solve any mystery, we follow the Poirot principle. Hercules Poirot, Agatha Christie's fictional detective, typically ignored the big clues, the clues that everyone else followed to a dead end. Rather, Poirot sought out the little insignificant clues, the things the others thought to be unimportant.Only when the answer to the little clues come into the picture do we solve the mystery of God, and discover that God is completely other than what most people imagine.
What are those little clues that everyone ignores?
We being with a God who stumbles under a cross He cannot carry and a God who labors in travail to bring forth life.
Lesson 6.1 A God Who Stumbles places Jesus' walk from Gethsemane to the Resurrection, the walk of the Atonement, as the beginning picture to us of any description of God we might have. And inside that walk, the most unusual and remarkable occurrence - a Christ who cannot carry His own cross.
Lesson 6.2 A God of Travail draws from the Scriptures the almost inconceivable concept that God labors in travail to bring forth life. In doing so, this lesson sets out the real meaning of Philippians 2, a Christ who calls forth an invisible God into being seen and known, in appearance as a man.
Lesson 6.3 A God Made Visible raises the whole impossible issue of symmorphy. How can God and I share one body, one heart, one spirit, one will, one mind together as one, yet distinct in communion as two persons, yet one in expression. God does the impossible.
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