Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Persevering In Difficult Times



Be still, and know that I am God… —Psalm 46:10

{CHAMBERS} “Perseverance is more than endurance. It is endurance combined with absolute assurance and certainty that what we are looking for is going to happen. Perseverance means more than just hanging on, which may be only exposing our fear of letting go and falling. Perseverance is our supreme effort of refusing to believe that our hero is going to be conquered. Our greatest fear is not that we will be damned, but that somehow Jesus Christ will be defeated. Also, our fear is that the very things our Lord stood for— love, justice, forgiveness, and kindness among men— will not win out in the end and will represent an unattainable goal for us. Then there is the call to spiritual perseverance. A call not to hang on and do nothing, but to work deliberately, knowing with certainty that God will never be defeated.”

{ELGIN} If you look around at the chaos and depravity in this country and in this world, you might be tempted to doubt that God will ever intervene.  But He has already.  The name of that intervention is Jesus.  Were you hopeful that we would have a Christian president who would save us and turn this country around?  If Billy Graham were elected president, even he could not change the hearts of the lost through the presidency.  It is man’s tendency to want a “king” to make things right.  (1 Samuel 8) When I would drive around in Haiti, I was always amazed at the names of the stores and shops.  One auto parts store is named “Mesi Jezi”, thank you Jesus auto parts.  Another “Bondye Fidel”, God is faithful.  The building supply store I frequented in Jacmel was “Perseverance”, which need no translation.  They all served as a reminder that God is present and sovereign.

The situation in the world may seem dark, but it is not the first time, nor, until Jesus returns, will it be the last.   (Romans 1:24,26,28)  God gave them over in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, God gave them over to degrading passions, and God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper.  But, at no point did God budge from His sovereignty.  As for the Christian in these troubled times, God wants us to persevere in our faith in spite of the turmoil around us.    (2 Corinthians 4:7-10) “But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us. We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed— always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.” To quote someone I know very well, me, “The darker the night, the brighter the light.”  So let your light shine.

No comments: