I am a Christian, a retired teacher, a mother and a grandmother. I love to read and I love the Lord Jesus Christ! Unless otherwise specified ,all visual illustrations are from the YOU VERSION APP of the Bible.
I am very excited about going home today. I can’t wait to be in my warm house again, with my familiar things and my cat. I always enjoy visiting family, especially grandchildren, but with health issues, this visit has been a rough one. And yesterday, the day of the birthday party that we came for, two of the three grandchildren started with fevers and a stomach bug. Poor babies! I prayed for them and their mommy and daddy took care of them, just as it should be. But it’s another sign that this is not my home.
When I return to Virginia, that is not really my home either. My true home is in heaven and nothing makes that more real than a stay in the hospital where the doctors and nurses are calling your case urgent and rushing you around for testing. I know in my heart that I am ready for heaven whenever God calls me there and my excitement about being with the Lord Jesus and all who have gone before me overwhelms me sometimes. We have to always keep in mind that the home we have on earth is temporary, just a tent dwelling while we wait for the real home Jesus has prepared for us in heaven. Glorious thoughts!
For those of use looking aghast at all of the sin that is being touted as normal in the world today, God has a response already given in His Word. You want to know why these things are happening? Read the Bible. You want to know the end result of all of this sin? Read the Bible. You want to know what God thinks about what is going on? Read the Bible. I have found myself turning to God’s Word not just for comfort but also for a hope for the future when things all around me look hopeless.
Are we a nation calling on the name of the Lord? Sadly, the answer is “no.” We are a nation lost in our own glory instead of depending on God and His glory. We are a nation that isn’t looking for God at all. God hasn’t moved. He is ready to answer our cry, ready to be found. But, as a nation, we are not calling on Him. Of course, there are a few of us who are calling on God, but the tumult of the many who have turned against Him resound so loudly that we are being ignored. Not by God! We are never ignored by God! We are ignored by the powers in D.C. and in each state capital who could actually change the direction in which our nation is going, if they would just call on the Name of the Lord. We are ignored by the media (unless they are vilifying Christians as an evil and divisive force). We are ignored by those who need Christ in their hearts.
The end result is not a good one. God will not sit back and patiently wait forever for men to call on Him and turn away from their sins. Look at God’s response to Israel’s sin after calling on them to return to Him over and over. The nation was destroyed, the people were taken captive and led away to Babylon, a symbol of sin and unrighteous living. These were God’s chosen people and He did not allow them to continue in their sin, their mocking of the One who had led them out of Egypt and into the Promised Land to begin with. Can we honestly say that God will deal differently with America? Judgment Day and the wrath of God is coming. Before that day comes, may we open our eyes and turn to God and sincerely repent and ask for His help. I am not seeing this happen. I am not prophesying that it will. I just have a little grain of hope inside me that someone in power somewhere will be stirred to call on the Only One who can make a difference in this chaotic and topsy-turvy world that is controlled by sin and darkness. God wants to answer…He is waiting for the call. As Christians, we need to pray for mercy but also for God to reply to our prayers. Perhaps judgment will be the answer; I can’t say because I don’t know. But I do know that what is happening in the world today is an abomination to the Holy Lord and it will not be allowed to stand without consequences.
I know with certainty that I have read this verse many times throughout the years. I have sat in classes with Ephesians 6 as it’s focus. But for perhaps the first time, I really noticed a very important word in this verse. Do you see it? The word is “when”. It says WHEN the day of evil comes, not “if” it comes. It seems to be a foregone conclusion that the day of evil is coming, not just a possibility or a probability, but a reality of life.
To some, this might be a “whoa, hold on there, you prophet of doom.” This is not a prophecy about evil coming; I believe instead that it is a prophecy about our being able to stand firmly WHEN it comes. We prepare in advance and then we can stand through anything that the enemy throws at us. We have to always be prepared since we don’t know WHEN the enemy will hurl his fiery darts at us.
Having been a teacher for almost four decades, I know all about preparation and lack thereof. I would spend every Saturday preparing lesson plans for the upcoming week, and most days it took almost the entire Saturday to do them. I had to make sure that I was ready to stand before my classes and teach the subject matter in a way that would make sense to them and so that they could use it to further their knowledge of the Spanish language. Nowadays since I am retired, my preparation is to get ready for the day and I begin each day with a devotional and Bible reading. I like to think that I am preparing myself for WHEN the evil days come, just as I got ready for when the students asked hard questions.
There is no such thing as a sneak attack if you are vigilant and always prepared for whatever may come. Because evil is there, waiting for you to let down your guard. The word is WHEN, not IF!
May your day be blessed with the knowledge that you are fully prepared to face whatever happens because you started the day putting on the full armor of God!
Remember the old game we played as children called Hide ‘n’ seek? Some hid and one child would count and then call out loudly, “Ready or not, here I come!” As Christians, we are supposed to always be ready for Christ to return. But there is more to that statement because as the Bible reveals, we also have to always be ready to tell others about Him, the hope who lives within us.
It’s easy to converse with others and not bring up God because we are very self-centered. Recently, I spent a week with my sister and got to give the testimony of God’s grace and goodness in my life, particularly when I had my stroke. I found myself veering off topic and talking about how quickly the ambulance arrived, how I got the clot-busting shot just in time and how my beloved husband slept on the floor alongside my bed in the ICU. Almost as an after-thought, I found myself saying that God was good to me and set everything up perfectly for me to be saved and alive. An after-thought! After all that He has done for me? What was I thinking? The truth is that I wasn’t. I was just telling the story and forgot to make God the center of it when He has been the center of my life for years. Apparently, though, I was not ready to give an answer that included Him until the end of the story. I’m resolving from now on to make Him the beginning, middle and end of the story and the rest of the story (the “fluff”) can go wherever it fits, if it fits. I don’t want to miss out on other opportunities to give God all of the glory!
How about you? Have you missed out on opportunities like the one I described? Good thing that God is the God of second chances (and third, and fourth, etc.). I have no doubt that He will remind me of this incident and help me the next time that I am giving this testimony to give the answer that is the real reason that I’m alive and recovered from a massive stroke. God was right there with me, from the ambulance ride, to the ER, in the ICU and in rehab. Every step I took and every skill I had to learn, He was there with me, encouraging me with His love. He is certainly always patient with me and wants me to get better at giving an answer. Thus, I have started my answer on this page. I’m ready now!
I hope that your day is blessed with opportunities to point to God and give the only answer to the hope that lives within you.
Vickie's Book Nook and Meditation Corner 