Frank Friedmann
The headlines and the news on both television and radio are sounding the alarm!
Economic crisis! Threats of war! Global warming! Flooding, hurricanes, and drought! Riots in the streets! Racial tension! Corruption! Crime is rising! Suicides occurring at an alarming rate!
As a pastor and author, I am being asked, "What do we do? What can we do?"
In the voices, and on the faces of the people that are asking those questions, I am hearing and seeing a frustration as they ponder their inability to change this rapidly darkening world we live in. They are expressing a sense of powerlessness. Of course, they are!!!
CHURCH:
Do not panic. Do not go to bed and pull the corers over your head in despair. Do not be crippled by fear or anxiety at what you see on the evening news.
PLEASE LISTEN:
We were never called to change the world - ever! That has never been, nor will it ever be our job.
The call on our lives from God is the same right now, as it has always been - Trust God!
Be honest with Him about what you see. Countless biblical characters faced much of what we are facing right now during their sojourn on this fallen planet. They brought what they saw to God, and then they exercised faith in Him, and continued to walk in this world with the confidence that He was in control and would be God to them in their moment of need.
I think of Habakkuk. With the wicked Chaldeans on the march to destroy his country, he cried out to God! In answer to his prayer, God told Habakkuk, “Trust me!” (The just shall live by faith). Yes, that was all he got! But it was enough!
Habakkuk did as he was instructed. I love his honesty. He said, “There is trembling on my lips and decay in my bones.” He wore the honest face of faith. Faith did not remove him from his circumstances, nor did it enable him to float through this wicked world without a care. He was facing ominous circumstances, and his body and soul agreed with his assessment of those circumstances.
But he trusted God, and heralded these glorious final words, “Though the fig tree does not blossom, and there be no fruit on the vine, yet will I rejoice in the Lord. I will joy in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength; He will make my feet like deer’s feet, and He will make me walk on my high hills.”
Note well, Dear Ones, that Habakkuk’s circumstances did not change. What changed was the focus of Habakkuk’s eyes, and what He saw, the living God Who reigns over this, His universe, placed a confident hope in Habakkuk’s heart that overruled the fear he had of the Chaldeans.
This is how we the church, are to face the “Chaldeans” of our modern world. Open your eyes. Be honest about what you see, and let me warn you what you will see is not good. But let what you see with your eyes, drive you to see God with eyes of faith.
Put your hand in the hand of the Holy Spirit, set your mind on things above, and trust Him as your life (Col. 3:3-4), your everything, so that you can experience His fulness individually, and express that fulness relationally, and then go live in such a way that you affect the people of this world within your sphere of influence in the community in which you live and work, with the confident hope that what you see with your eyes is not the end of the story!
(That was a long sentence, you might want to read it again. I did.)
Let what you know of Him, lead you to rejoice, knowing the He is your strength, and He will make your feet like the feet of a deer, and He will make you walk in high places!
May you know:
That what Mordecai said to Esther so long ago, is what the Holy Spirit would say to all of us today...
We were born for such a time as this! Lay hold of this time, by laying hold of the life of Jesus that lives in you, and let your light shine in this darkness.
YOU WERE BORN FOR THIS TIME!
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