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| Picture credit: Sam Moghalam Khamseh from [Unsplash] |
Am I the only one who senses Year 2024 will be particularly unsettling? I'm definitely a landlubber, one uniquely comfortable on the shores of life, but recently I've developed the heart of a mariner. I'm diligently looking out to sea and preparing for the uncertainty of a coming storm.
From childhood I've heard this sailors rhyme: Red sky at night, sailor's delight. Red sky at morning, sailors take warning! What I didn't realize was its biblical source: JESUS!
Matthew 16:1-4 reads like this:
1 The Pharisees also with the Sadducees came, and tempting desired him that he would shew a sign from heaven.
2 He answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red.
3And in the morning, it will be foul weather today: for the sky is red and lowering. O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?
4 A wicked and adulterous generation seekers after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas. And he left them and departed.
Like the ancient religious leaders we often demand of God a sign from heaven to help us, guide us even comfort us through the storms yet to come but do we not see that it has already been given? IT IS HOPE!! God tells us not to FEAR but to Hold Fast to OUR HOPE IN CHRIST perfectly illustrated in I Thessalonians 5:21-22 Click Here
TEST ALL THINGS!
We are inundated with information: truth, half-truths and down right lies! It comes from everywhere and very little can be trusted. What is true for us now was the same for the Apostle Paul who gave this warning to the Christians at Thessalonica! In the first few verses of this chapter he tells them to be awake and alert for Christ could come at any time! To live as children of light in this dark world. In other words don't 'fall for the okie doke' as the Old school saints would say: examine or test, the validity of the information you receive with the Word of God Click Here: Romans 2:18
HOLD FAST!
Even with thorough examination of the Word and the discipline it demands, Christians may have difficulties but we must not give up! To hold fast in nautical terms means to grab on to something solid and secure to keep from being swept overboard. I don't have to tell you how rocky the seas of change are today. Even as I write socially, politically, mentally, economically~we are experiencing it all! Yet, The Lord Jesus Christ the Rock on which our anchor of hope holds will keep us steady, keeping us true to all that we have learned! Click Here: Matthew 7:24-27
AVOID EVIL!
There was a reason in Jesus' High Priestly Prayer recorded in John 17:15 that He asked God not to keep us from the cares and woes of this world or its deadly influence. He didn't ask that we be spared by way of escape at all but to be protected from the evil one." He then in the 17th verse exclaimed: "Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth!" If we know TRUTH then we know EVIL when we see and hear it! So its incumbent upon us to avoid even its "appearance"as shown earlier in I Thessalonians 5:22. TEST, HOLD AND AVOID EVIL! Do this and your anchor will hold!
IN TIMES LIKE THESE
In times like this you need a Savior,
In times like these you need an anchor,
Be very sure, be very sure
Your anchor holds and grips the Solid rock!
(Hymn by Ruth Caye Jones, Copyright 1944)
MORE SCRIPTURES TO ENCOURAGE YOU: Hebrews 10:23-25; Mark 9:23; Psalm 71:14; Romans 12:12; Romans 15:13; Jeremiah 29:11; I Peter 1:3; Isaiah 40:31
UNTIL NEXT TIME...
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