Last week I had the pleasure of going to see the movie "God's Not Dead." While watching the movie I could not help but cheer on the guy who was taking on the mean Atheist Professor however there was one point where I was actually left speechless. There was a quote in the movie that after listening to it has haunted my thoughts ever since. I have been wanting to share this quote and my thoughts on it for some time but I have found myself struggling to think of what to say. This quote reached to the depths of my soul and shook my core. Here it is...
"Sometimes the devil allows people to live a life free of trouble because he doesn't want them turning to God. Their sin is like a jail cell, except it is all nice and comfy and there doesn't seem to be any reason to leave. The door's wide open. Till one day, time runs out, and the cell door slams shut, and suddenly it's too late."
When I think about Satan I think about him slinking around and making everyone's lives miserable. I never thought that he could actually try to make our lives great so that we don't have to rely on God's strength. I have two thoughts on this quote.
#1. We need to rejoice in suffering. I know it sounds crazy but suffering is how we know that we are a threat to satan and when we need God the most. This is what the Bible says about suffering and how we should handle it.
Romans 5:3-5 (ESV) "Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us."
James 1:2-4 (ESV) "Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing."
1 Peter 4:14 (ESV) "If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you."
God never says that we would be without suffering. In fact He tells us to expect it and rejoice in it. Have you ever noticed that more people talk about God when something is going wrong? When Christians are suffering they pray to God to end their pain. When non-believers are suffering they say "where is your God now?" God is never absent in the suffering and our joy should not be absent as well. Even though we are suffering we know that we are saved by God's grace and at the end of the day we know that we will spend eternity in heaven.
Which leads me to point #2. We need to be praying for the people living a "comfortable" life.
Which leads me to point #2. We need to be praying for the people living a "comfortable" life.
This quote talks about how satan allows people to live a comfortable life so that they won't need to turn to God. They are sitting in a jail cell with the door wide open. They are welcome to leave and turn to Jesus at any time but they don't because they are comforted by their worldly things. They do not even know that they are missing something until it is too late and the door slams shut. Now the jail cell turns into what it was created to be in the first place: prison. Many people walk around today and they are sitting in a prison without knowing it. They don't understand that they need salvation because nothing is wrong so why fix it? There is nothing the devil loves more than lukewarm people.
1 John 2:15 "Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him."
Matthew 5:13 "You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt has become tasteless, how can it be made salty again? It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled under foot by men."
Matthew 16:26 "For what shall a man be profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and forfeit his life? or what shall a man give in exchange for his life?"
Jesus does not want us to be "comfortable." He wants us to rely fully on Him. We do not need our own strength if we have the strength of God. That is why we can rejoice in trials because we know that it will all be ok.
What shattered my world when I heard this quote was the thought of young people. I realized just how many young people that I know that are "comfortable" in their own jail cell. They rely on the world to tell them what to do. They seek out approval from the latest fashion blogs and social media streams. They turn to celebrities for role models and strive to change everything about themselves in order to live in a "comfortable" world. They are turning to everything except God for the comfort that they need.
As a missionary I was always asked the question "why don't you witness to people in your own country?" I always struggled with this question because I always felt that I was "called" to other countries to share the love of Jesus but on Saturday April 26th 2014 I realized that I was called to something completely different. I am called to students. I don't care what country they live in I care about what kind of world they are living in. I want to find those "comfortable" jail cell students and bring them out of their shackles of lies that satan has told them. I want to find the students that don't know they need Jesus and bring Jesus to them. That is my new calling. This is why I am headed home. I know that I could probably find tons of young people sitting in their jail cells in any country but if I can think of one country that probably has the most "comfortable" teens it is my own. America is my new mission field and I am being called to release the chains that bind the hearts of our young people.
I am very excited about next year and coming home to do mission work. This is why I do what I do. This is what God called me to do. This is why I live and breathe. I am just thankful that He brought me out of my own jail cell so that I can help free others.
I am very excited about next year and coming home to do mission work. This is why I do what I do. This is what God called me to do. This is why I live and breathe. I am just thankful that He brought me out of my own jail cell so that I can help free others.
0 comments:
Post a Comment