Revelation 14:11-13
If you worship the beast and the
idol and accept the mark of its name, you will be tortured day and
night. The smoke from your torture will go up forever and ever, and you
will never be able to rest.
God’s people must learn to endure. They must also obey his commands and have faith in Jesus.
Then
I heard a voice from heaven say, “Put this in writing. From now on, the
Lord will bless everyone who has faith in him when they die.”
The Spirit answered, “Yes, they will rest from their hard work, and they will be rewarded for what they have done.”
Scripture taken from the Contemporary English Version © 1991,1992, 1995 by American Bible Society, Used by Permission.
Our
little great-niece Kelsey was sporting a “Hello Kitty” temporary tattoo
on her tummy a few days ago. Her mom let her wear it underneath her
blouse where it wasn’t readily visible…but Kelsey was happy to show it
to anyone and everyone. Her dad teased her and said, “I think we need
to do some scrubbing and get that off of there!” Kelsey giggled. In a
few days, all traces of the harmless little cartoon kitty will be
history.
My cousins Janette and Natalie never steer me wrong. When they recommend a book, I listen. So when Janette told me about One Thousand Gifts* by
Ann Voskamp, I made a mental note to check it out…and now I can’t stop
reading! I have posted a link to a website where you can read the first
chapter. Please keep reading…this first chapter is a tough one!
Voskamp talks about the death of her toddler sister, Aimee, when Ann was
a little girl…and what it did to her family – especially her dad. She
says that after her sister’s death, a church bus picked Voskamp up each
Sunday for services…but her parents stopped going to church altogether.
Ann Voskamp says, “Really,
when you bury a child — or when you just simply get up every day and
live life raw — you murmur the question soundlessly. No one hears. Can
there be a good God? A God who graces with good gifts when a crib lies
empty through long nights, and bugs burrow through coffins? Where is
God, really? How can He be good when babies die, and marriages implode,
and dreams blow away, dust in the wind? Where is grace bestowed when
cancer gnaws and loneliness aches and nameless places in us soundlessly
die, break off without reason, erode away. Where hides this joy of the
Lord, this God who fills the earth with good things, and how do I fully
live when life is full of hurt? How do I wake up to joy and grace and
beauty and all that is the fullest life when I must stay numb to losses
and crushed dreams and all that empties me out?”
Thankfully,
many of us have never witnessed a delivery truck running smack over our
precious baby. But other life events have caused us to turn away from
God, all the same.
Voskamp describes the reaction she observed in her own family…”No,
God, we won’t take what You give. No, God, Your plans are a gutted,
bleeding mess and I didn’t sign up for this and You really thought I’d
go for this? No, God, this is ugly and this is a mess and can’t You get
anything right and just haul all this pain out of here and I’ll take it
from here, thanks. And God? Thanks for nothing.” She adds…”I
wake and put the feet to the plank floors, and I believe the Serpent’s
hissing lie, the repeating refrain of his campaign through the ages: God
isn’t good. It’s the cornerstone of his movement. That God withholds
good from His children, that God does not genuinely, fully, love us.”
In
other words, life gets tough, and we “accept the mark” of the devil’s
name…we tattoo His claim on our bellies or forehead and go on with our
lives. In Voskamp’s words, “Our fall was, has always been, and
always will be, that we aren’t satisfied in God and what He gives. We
hunger for something more, something other. If I’m ruthlessly honest, I
may have said yes to God, yes to Christianity, but really, I have lived
the no.”
I can hear you now. “I would NEVER take the mark of the devil! I would never turn my back on God and follow him.” Really?
Let’s be honest. There have been times when God seemed
silent…distant…and our world seemed to be crumbling around us over
SOMETHING…and we were at the very least tempted to say, “That’s it…I’m
done! Trusting God is simply not working for me!” And that’s where
these verses from Revelation hit home. Stick with God…have faith…hang
in there. “He means to fill us with glory again. With glory and grace,” Voskamp writes.
She points out that “…maybe
you don’t want to change the story, because you don’t know what a
different ending holds. There’s a reason I am not writing the story and
God is. He knows how it all works out, where it all leads, what it all
means. I don’t.” The Bible tells us that the “end of the story” is beautiful…glorious…and worth the effort and faith to persevere.
It’s
time to “remove the tattoo”…to scrub our skin and come clean with
God…and to trust that His plans – and the yet-to-be-seen outcomes – are
perfect. Perfect rest from all of our struggles and heartaches
awaits…it really does…if only we will hold on and keep believing in the
promises of God. Voskamp tells us…”To fully live — to live full of grace and joy and all that is beauty eternal. It is possible, wildly.” I honestly believe this…do you?
©2014 Debbie Robus
* http://onethousandgifts.com/
To read the first chapter of One Thousand Gifts, go to http://www.scribd.com/doc/46474858/One-Thousand-Gifts-by-Ann-Voskamp-Excerpt
Showing posts with label choosing the devil. Show all posts
Showing posts with label choosing the devil. Show all posts
Daily Devotional for July 25, 2013
John 3:16-18
“This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him.
Scripture quotations from The Message. © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress, Colorado Springs, CO. All rights reserved.
Last week at Vacation Bible School, the children learned the Bible verse from John 3:16. As I talked with the students who came through my crafts class (roughly ages 7-12), I asked them what this verse meant to them. In the more traditional translation, they were told that whoever believes in Jesus will not perish. What did the word “perish” mean to them? You can’t tell a child that they will never die… because in the mortal sense, all of us will die someday. So how do you explain this verse in a way that makes sense?
I believe this translation from The Message goes a long way toward doing exactly this! God loved us to enough to sacrifice His one and only Son, Jesus Christ – to send Him into the world to fight the devil, and to suffer on the cross for our sins… to “stand in the crosshairs on our behalf”. If we believe this and trust Jesus, we can have a whole and lasting life… help with all of our troubles…peace and comfort in every situation… and the promise of forever at His feet in heaven when our human bodies give out. If we do not choose Jesus, we choose to perish, which means we ultimately choose the “death sentence” of hell – whether we say this out loud or not.
Children understand choices. They make them every day. We tell even smaller children, “You can choose to throw that temper tantrum and go to ‘Time Out,’ or you can choose to stop your screaming and play nicely. You get to choose – eat your dinner and you get ice cream; don’t eat your dinner, and there will be no dessert!” So when we tell them, “You can choose to believe that God loves you… that Jesus wants to be your ‘Forever Friend’ and help you with anything and everything. When you get to heaven, Jesus will stand before God and tell Him that ‘I’ve covered his/her sins. He is part of our family forever.’ Or, you can choose to trust the devil, and he will lie to you and tell you your life is good – but it will all end very badly someday. When your earthly life ends, there will be nobody there to stand up for you. This is what it means to ‘perish.’”
This is a hard reality… one we don’t like to think about…one that on the surface paints Christianity as cold and calculated – an “either/or” situation. And in some ways, it is. But don’t miss the beauty and peace of this passage. God loved us SO MUCH that He was willing to send is one and only Son, Jesus Christ, to live among us, love us, and teach us how to get along… and then die a horrible, gruesome, agonizing death so that we can LIVE… FOREVER and EVER and EVER! All we have to do is choose Jesus! All we have to do is love Him back, and He takes care of absolutely, positively everything else! Yes, the alternative is essentially a “death sentence.” Yes, those who choose not to believe are destined for an eternity in hell… if not hell on earth. But it doesn’t have to be this way. The choice is so simple… and beautiful… and filled with peace and joy. Choose Jesus. Choose JESUS! CHOOSE JESUS!!!
At the end of our VBS, I believe many of the children totally “got this”. If little children can understand God’s words in John 3:16-18, why can’t we? What is keeping us from believing with childlike faith? The stakes are so high… the rewards are so great… the peace is indescribable. Will you choose to perish with the devil… or will you choose to live with Jesus? You’ve been given an amazing, incredible gift in Jesus Christ… won’t you accept Him and invite Him into your heart forever?
©2013 Debbie Robus
“This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him.
Scripture quotations from The Message. © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002 by Eugene Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress, Colorado Springs, CO. All rights reserved.
Last week at Vacation Bible School, the children learned the Bible verse from John 3:16. As I talked with the students who came through my crafts class (roughly ages 7-12), I asked them what this verse meant to them. In the more traditional translation, they were told that whoever believes in Jesus will not perish. What did the word “perish” mean to them? You can’t tell a child that they will never die… because in the mortal sense, all of us will die someday. So how do you explain this verse in a way that makes sense?
I believe this translation from The Message goes a long way toward doing exactly this! God loved us to enough to sacrifice His one and only Son, Jesus Christ – to send Him into the world to fight the devil, and to suffer on the cross for our sins… to “stand in the crosshairs on our behalf”. If we believe this and trust Jesus, we can have a whole and lasting life… help with all of our troubles…peace and comfort in every situation… and the promise of forever at His feet in heaven when our human bodies give out. If we do not choose Jesus, we choose to perish, which means we ultimately choose the “death sentence” of hell – whether we say this out loud or not.
Children understand choices. They make them every day. We tell even smaller children, “You can choose to throw that temper tantrum and go to ‘Time Out,’ or you can choose to stop your screaming and play nicely. You get to choose – eat your dinner and you get ice cream; don’t eat your dinner, and there will be no dessert!” So when we tell them, “You can choose to believe that God loves you… that Jesus wants to be your ‘Forever Friend’ and help you with anything and everything. When you get to heaven, Jesus will stand before God and tell Him that ‘I’ve covered his/her sins. He is part of our family forever.’ Or, you can choose to trust the devil, and he will lie to you and tell you your life is good – but it will all end very badly someday. When your earthly life ends, there will be nobody there to stand up for you. This is what it means to ‘perish.’”
This is a hard reality… one we don’t like to think about…one that on the surface paints Christianity as cold and calculated – an “either/or” situation. And in some ways, it is. But don’t miss the beauty and peace of this passage. God loved us SO MUCH that He was willing to send is one and only Son, Jesus Christ, to live among us, love us, and teach us how to get along… and then die a horrible, gruesome, agonizing death so that we can LIVE… FOREVER and EVER and EVER! All we have to do is choose Jesus! All we have to do is love Him back, and He takes care of absolutely, positively everything else! Yes, the alternative is essentially a “death sentence.” Yes, those who choose not to believe are destined for an eternity in hell… if not hell on earth. But it doesn’t have to be this way. The choice is so simple… and beautiful… and filled with peace and joy. Choose Jesus. Choose JESUS! CHOOSE JESUS!!!
At the end of our VBS, I believe many of the children totally “got this”. If little children can understand God’s words in John 3:16-18, why can’t we? What is keeping us from believing with childlike faith? The stakes are so high… the rewards are so great… the peace is indescribable. Will you choose to perish with the devil… or will you choose to live with Jesus? You’ve been given an amazing, incredible gift in Jesus Christ… won’t you accept Him and invite Him into your heart forever?
©2013 Debbie Robus
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