Public transit and wifi...

     How modern we have become.  Traveling to pick up a car so here I go on the bus again but able to do some work while someone else drives.  I have been thinking of this week's sermon and I am impressed to point out Peter's instruction to us as Christians and the issue of suffering.  I often wonder what the prosperity gospel ministers do with these verses.  Everything is honky-dory and you get every green light and never have an illness.  Matthew 5:11, 12 tell us that we will have others revile and persecute and utter all kinds of evil against us.  Matthew 10:14, 17 says that some Christians will be delivered over to the courts and flogged and dragged before governors for Christ's sake.  John 15:18 says that the world will hate us.  Acts 7:58 says the first martyr Stephen was cast out and stoned.  Acts 5:41 says that some with suffer dishonor.  2 Corinthians 11:24-27 lays out Paul's persecutions for the sake of Christ, lashes, beaten, stoned, shipwrecked, dangers, sleepless nights, hunger, etc.  Acts 15:25, 26 says Christians will risk their lives for the sake of Christ.  So Peter is drawing upon a wealth of scripture when he tells the Christians of the Roman Empire to not be alarmed or surprised when suffering comes upon them.  It is a mark of a true Christian when you suffer for the sake of your relationship with Christ.  Oh how we never talk about this.  We all want comfort but I would rather have the comfort of God in whatever situation I am in than to be comfortable without Him.  


     Another point is that the judgment of how we are living will start within the church.  God is in the process, a never ending process of purging the church of those who are going for the ride but not necessarily paying the fare.  In Ezekiel 9 is the story about God marking those in Jerusalem who sigh and groan over all the abominations that are committed in it.  Jerusalem was at a time of great evil against the Lord.  If someone didn't have this mark then God purged them.  God instructs them to begin at His sanctuary, His church, with the elders, the leaders of the church.  How important it is that we don't mock God's ways.  God could do the very thing today but His grace gives many much more time to come back to Him.  This passage lets us know that sin can reside in the church but God will not let it reside long.


     So I travel and type and ask God's provision on my body today.


Adam
A simple man serving a great God and the local pastor of Stillwater Community Chapel (stillwater-chapel.org). We are in our 38th year of full time ministry. God directed us to this local body of believers on the Western Range of the Rockies to grow with them in mission and mindedness of Christ.

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