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Life is sacred. As God said to Jeremiah, “before you were born I knew you. I formed you, I set you apart, and ordained you…” Regardless of color, class, community, or cast, you were fearfully and wonderfully made. God has plans for you. Every builder has a plan and God is the God of Intelligent design. God made you on purpose, for a purpose. Not every acorn becomes an oak, and not every man respects God’s plan. God wants the best for us. God is Love. Love is patient and kind. Love wants the best for you, is not envious, focused on itself, or unseemly. Love is not self-seeking. Love wishes for your best, hopes you find peace and rest, and endures each trial and test. Love never fails. Rejecting God’s love alone is enough to miss the mark. The Apostle Paul said it well, when he said, “without love I am nothing.” Soon after we are born, however, we begin to realize that something is wrong. Life involves pain, suffering and sorrow. We scrape our knee, get stung by a bee, and soon find out that not everything is free. Not everyone is a friend, some people just pretend. Happiness does not come on a silver platter, and each must decide for himself the things that matter. As to putting our finger on the “what is wrong with people” is to discover that it’s the same thing that is wrong with us, sin. We all are infected. Sin was the first pathogen. The word pathogen means to cause to suffer and nothing, nothing causes more suffering on this planet than sin. All have sinned. The mortality rate of sin is 100%. Failure to believe God, to doubt his word and love, resulted in the original sin and loss of peace and paradise. Sin caused Cain to kill his brother and then sin killed Cain himself, for the wages of sin is death. Satan is still whispering his lies about God’s love, truth and plan for man, and men are still taking the bait, choosing to hate, and are snake-bitten. Satan is the sower of discord, author of chaos, father of lies. His promises are hollow, his purposes dark, and his future is doom. His way is the wrong way. God has provided a better way. Jesus is the way. For the sinner, he is the way out. For the seeker, he is the way in. For those who have fallen, he is the way up. For those who are willing to admit they “have gone astray,” he is the way back; and for those who are lost, Jesus is the way home. What are you waiting for? He is the High Way, the Freeway, the Thruway, the Narrow Way and the Only Way. Every other way leads to destruction. The political left and political right are manmade ways and means. They are physical solutions attempting to solve a spiritual problem. They won’t work. The human heart must be changed by faith, not force. Money is not the way either. Satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness, saying “all these things will I give you, if you just bow down, and kneel before me” Jesus basically said, keep your stuff, it is written “Thou shalt worship God alone, and only Him shalt thou serve.” The world is still filled with chaos, vanity, and darkness. It is still filled with hatred, war and destruction. Man’s problem is not a skin problem, it is a sin problem. It is not a race problem, it is a grace problem. Society’s problem is not a job problem it is a God problem. Satan is still doing his evil work. Sinners are still falling for the lie and going down the well worn path to ruin. Some are still standing at a fork in the road, at the crossroads, before the cross of Christ. They are still trying to make up their mind. It is at the cross that all men are equal and all have a chance to choose. One way leads to life the other to death. God’s way is love. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” Jn. 3:16 Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life, no man cometh unto the Father but by me.” Jn. 14:6
Dear Lord, |