Are We Ready?

It always amazes me when God works in the same kinds of ways to impress the same truth on different Christians in different stages of life, locale, completely unbeknownst to the others.  There have been quite a few times in my life that God has been working in my life showing me a particular spiritual truth and that truth shows up in magazine articles, books, blogs etc....Now is one of those times.  Last week I read Revelation, then I ordered a book by Verne Poythress on the lessons of Revelation called The Returning King  It was not a commentary, I ordered that as well, it just hasn't come to my door yet.  After I finished Poythress and the Apostle John's visions, I picked up a book I haven't looked at in years; The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  I am half way through and it dove tails with Revelation and Poythress.  At the Christian Bookstore downtown, I picked up the latest book by John Piper; Spectacular Sins.  Writing with a pastor's heart in order to prepare people for the coming disasters, calamities, and persecutions (his words not mine).  This is definitely an encapsulation of what I have been reading. Piper says that the church in the West is a "coddled people.  On page 16 he says, "Coddled people will not be good listeners when their world collapses.  They will be numb with confusion and rage at the God who wasn't supposed to allow this."  

The Book of Revelation is warning us of the same thing.  In every generation Satan is raising up His forces of destruction to try to defeat the Church.  Do not fear what you are about to suffer.  Behold, the devil is about to throw some of of you in prison, that you may be tested and for ten days you will have tribulation.  Be faithful unto death, and I will give you the crown of life (Rev. 2:10).   Piper also says that the time is coming.  As I read the book of Revelation, which I have avoided for years, I learned that every generation has it's Anti-Christ's, and that all of it is for the Glory of God and His Son.  Nothing can come upon us, that is not from His hand.  

This is exactly what Bonhoeffer says in The Cost of Discipleship.  In the introduction to this book on page sixteen he states, "that the National Socialism was a brutal attempt to make history without God and to found it on the strength of man alone."  This is the attempt of every Anti-Christ in every generation.  On page twenty-four he says, " the Christian must be ready for martyrdom and death, it is only in this way that man learns faith.  When a man really gives up trying to make something out of himself-saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman (a so-called clerical somebody), a righteous or unrighteous man....when in the fullness of task, questions, success or ill-hap, experiences and perplexities, a man throws himself in the arms of God....then he wakes with Christ in Gethsemane.  This is faith, that is metanoia and it is thus that he becomes a man and a Christian. How can a man wax arrogant if in a this-sided life he shares the suffering of God?"  On page twenty-nine and thirty the introduction says, "Bonhoeffer was firmly and rightly convinced that it its not only a Christian right but a Christian duty towards God to oppose tyranny, that is government which is no longer based on natural law and the law of God. Thus all kinds of secular totalitarianism which force man to cast aside his religious and moral objections to God and subordinate the laws of justice and morality to the State are incompatible with his (Bonhoeffer)  conception of life."

I believe all across this country God is raising up, teaching, getting Christians ready for, and waking us up to what could lie a head, for our generation or the ones behind us.  This has caused me to ask myself some very difficult questions; has Christ so permeated my heart, soul, and mind that the comforts of this world, do not have a strangle hold on me, if I lost everything would I continue to stand, how much do I love the lost around me, can I say that my faith depends on Christ or does it blow with every circumstance, am I aware of the spiritual battle in the heavenlies surrounding the current events is our country?  God will continue to put me, and you in situations, circumstances, and suffering seasons that force us to exercise faith.  When all falls, all is torn, "I am held."  Song by Natalie Grant.....

Two months is too little.

They let him go.

They had no sudden healing.

To think that providence would

Take a child from his mother while she prays

Is appalling.

Who told us we'd be rescued?

What has changed and why should we be saved from nightmares?

We're asking why this happens

To us who have died to live?

It's unfair.

This is what it means to be held.

How it feels when the sacred is torn from your life

And you survive.

This is what it is to be loved.

And to know that the promise was 

When everything fell we'd be held.

This hand is bitterness.

We want to taste it, let the hatred know our sorrow.

The wise hands opens slowly to lilies of the valley and tomorrow.

This is what it means to be held.

How it feels when the sacred is torn from your life

And you survive.

This is what it is to be loved.

And to know that the promise was

When everything fell we'd be held.

If hope is born of suffering.

If this is only the beginning.

Can we not wait for one hour watching for our Savior?

This is what it means to be held.

How it feels when the sacred is torn from your life

And you survive.

This is what it is to be loved.

And to know that the promise was

When everything fell we'd be held. 

Even so, Come Quickly, Lord Jesus..............Waiting with you, Lynn