A brother in the Lord posted this in a Yahoo Group I belong to. With his permission I have reposted it here. I found it encouraging and edifying. I hope you do to.

You know, sometimes many of us may think to ourselves just “How did I get into this mess?” or “I don’t want to believe this.” Many of us, as I have come to realize, are numb to much of the calamity and chaos taking place in our local cities and devastating events happening around the world. From tornadoes, to economic downturn, political stalemate and backroom deals to North African riots protesting against tyrannical governments, oil spills, animals dying, comets or brown dwarfs headed for earth, solar flares, planetary magnetic fluctuations…how do we make sense of it all?

It maybe the end of the world but it’s not the end. The world loves its own, its own people and its own ways and the world hated Christ because He is not of this world just as we are not of this world.

This numbness that many feel can be expressed more as a helpless feeling in the midst of such massive changes and excessive forces; that we are incapable of changing what is up ahead. Yet though we can not change the future, we can prepare for it, we can champion in the endless glories and dream-like imagination that encompasses eternity, we can stand in awe of the endless chase of God that man will undertake, each day (without night) being in the presence of the Almighty God who showed the depths of His glory and His love through the history of a despicable and contemptible world. We know God’s power more so in our weakness than we could have ever known Him had we been initially made immortal. We know His faithfulness even more so through the trials of deathly and painful arrows that the enemy sends our way, through the course of a creation that groans and travails as a woman with birth pangs since the beginning than we could have ever known Him had we first experience a perfect world with no troubles. His power, His faithfulness and also omnipresence stands the test of time. Looking back from eternities hand we may say if all of the history of the world, the rise and fall of nations, were summarized in a short war of words it would be said “The world has declared ‘God isn’t’ but God says ‘I am'”

This is the Lord we will serve for eternity. This is the God that Simon the prophet proudly was martyred for. The God that John the Baptist was beheaded for, The Lord who is Triune and infinitely glorious above all. What will I say to the Saviour the day I step into Heaven? I don’t know and whatever it is it will be true and right because I will be perfect in that day.

It doesn’t matter so much where you go but the fact that God is there. When you read the book of Ephesians, doesn’t that give such a great contrast to today’s churchanity? I can’t read that book without being shaken and desiring of standing on roof tops and screaming “HE LIVES”
No church dismissal, no secular church activities and games, no more Baptist feasts just yelling “HE LIVES” “JESUS IS GOD and HIS SALVATION IS ETERNAL. COME TO HIM.”

The world would have us to believe otherwise whether implicitly or explicitly, whether by lackadaisical church Sunday worship or humanistic public schools and universities yet either way the doors will lead to hell. They want us to feel crazy in having such hope, they want us to just hold God as a bumper sticker on the back of our life or a little short devotional without living our whole lives and expressing our whole being toward Him. They capitalize on our fears that we can easily escape but they never will from their own accord.

Heb 2:
14 Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil;

15 And deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.

Just consider the fear of death for a moment. Like the fear of heights, it causes us to squirm and back away from the perceived danger, if we jump, placing our foot on open air, it will surely be to our death. Yet the Word says “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength they shall mount up with wings as eagles they shall run and not be weary they shall walk and not faint.” Confronted with a canyon of problems and Satanic fronts against us if we only take that leap of faith will we not fly like eagles and in the day of adversity still stand?

Hebrews 2:15 is absolutely amazing to me, astounding, it summarizes the driving forces that enable sin to have it’s strong hold. It is a weak yet convincing laugh in the face of danger to support “Eat, drink and be merry” when met with the inevitability of death. The children of darkness glory in their darkness, in their depravity as a pseudo-confidence; a big-time bluff to give meaning to meaninglessness and honor to the dishonorable. Death can have no real meaning to them for if it death were held in the scales all their life would be suddenly recognized as futile and in vain. For if one considers death in only it’s real perspective there is a presumption of worthiness of death and hence guilt in which both the moral and empirical consideration of death reveals God as Judge and the holder of the keys of death and Hell. Therefore, the individual must consider himself as judge and the ruler of his life and denounce or deny the causality of death while placing it in the fiction section of his mind.

12 men who were taught by the Son of God, who performed miracles, who spoke in tongues, who were endowed with the Holy Spirit, who waged war against sin, who emboldened and consoled their fellow saints, who some authored what we call the New Testament were average ordinary men with like desires as us but they had been chosen and picked out of the corrupt world they knew, to accomplish something greater and more magnificent than any of us could ever imagine. Multitudes of lives have been changed through the ages, yes nations have fallen and risen because of the actions and the words they penned. The Bible is the number one seller in the world that outnumbers all the other nine of the top ten best-selling books ever sold. Buildings have been constructed around the world with steeples, tens of thousands of baptisteries have been made. Families that were once broken have now by the power of it’s words become mended and strong just as friendships also can be restored. Those 12 men whose story is told in the New Testament (one who fell away and was replaced by casting lots) those men changed the course of this world and they were changed by Jesus Christ who was crucified and rose again on the third day.

They were men who lived without fear of death, they; their fleshly persona was crucified with Christ. Nevertheless they lived but not them but Christ within them. He has overcome the world, He has overcome death, He is the lamb that was slain but liveth evermore.

Ps 27:1
1 The LORD [is] my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the LORD [is] the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?

We are in bondage as much as we fear death and as much as we allow others to elicit fear in us. The fatal flaw in the way of their thinking and reasoning is that though they are afraid to die and undergo the ending of their life they live as though death is a trifle matter and scoff at the only thing capable of saving them: Christ’s promise of eternal life.

May the Lord fill your heart with hope, courage and wisdom in the days preceding His coming.
May He awaken us to the cause of lost souls once again, en-flaming our hearts with anguish for the death of loved ones and friends. May He cause us before the time comes when, we can’t as freely speak, to boldly declare the righteousness and glories of God to the world and abroad whether in sight or blindness, whether in rain or shine, whether in pain or health, whether as old or young that all of us may live in accordance to His will and be blameless and without shame in the day of His coming knowing that we did all we could for Him, with all the gifts we had and ability we could muster, and may we count all things as dung that we may win Christ. May the Lord help me to crucify the old man and to never go back to him ever again. Amen!

Blessings in God,
~Mark