Oh, what joy for those
….whose disobedience is forgiven,
….whose sin is put out of sight!
Yes, what joy for those
….whose record the Lord has cleared of guilt,
….whose lives are lived in complete honesty! Psalm 32:1-2 NLT
Luke 21:9-24 (<<click here to read the passage)
To be perfectly honest I struggle with passages of this nature. I have seen and interacted with so many people who have been caught up in trying to figure it all out. They spend hours lifting every leaf of “evidence” in hopes of finding the “answer”. It’s taking everything in me to continue typing because I absolutely abhor the obsession with it all!
But…it is important because Jesus, our Lord, and Savior, mentioned it not just once in His teachings but several times over throughout His ministry. It is a worthwhile line of study, but the problem lies in the fact that there is only so much that we can know and the rest – all of it – is known to God alone! All the particulars, the fine details, the whos, the wheres, the whens are known to God alone!
And I am secure enough in my relationship with Him to trust Him. I don’t need to know it all to trust Him. I don’t need to understand it all to trust Him. I don’t need to have all my questions answered because in Jesus we find all the answers to all of life’s questions, both great and small…and I trust Him.
One thing of importance that I glean from this passage is the fact that we will not go through one minute of it by ourselves. God will continue to be our Emmanuel – our “God with us”. He will give us the right words when we need them. We will show forth His wisdom…but we most assuredly will go through it.
I don’t know about all the pre-trib (tribulation), mid-trib, post-trib points of discussion but we will go through some sort of tribulation and it will be no walk in the park. It will be hard – and even that word is too soft! Look at some of the words in what Jesus had to say: persecution, dragged, stand trial, charges against you, betray, kill, hate.
Those are all very hard words. But Jesus makes it very clear in verse 19, “By standing firm, you will win your souls.”
What we have to comprehend is that this won’t be the outcome of our relationship with Christ if we don’t truly have a relationship with Him.
Many of us in our formative years had a test for which we needed to be ready. And at some point, amongst them all, there was one for which we were not ready. We played instead of studying and in the end, we failed. We neglected what we needed to do to achieve the desired end result.
If we are to be ready for whatever tribulation we must endure, we cannot neglect our relationship with Jesus. If we are to hear His voice, we must listen to Him speak now. If we need His word to come to mind at the time He needs it to, we have to read it and study it now! He has given us everything we need…Himself. May we use it wisely. Amen.
Nov 19th, 2020, Thurs, 6:50 pm
