Good morning,
Loving God wholeheartedly has a number of awesome results. When we come to the point of realizing that our sin nature is getting us into more and more pain and we wonder why our good plans don’t seem to work the way we expected, then repenting, asking Jesus to save us, and learning to love God is wonderful stuff. When we love our God and Savior more and more, we learn that going through hard times and difficult circumstances teaches us how God keeps his promises in the face of overwhelming challenges. Loving the Bible and the God of the Bible gives us a whole new understanding of why we are here and what God is up to when he asks us to trust him and obey him. The longer that we love God the more we appreciate the price that Jesus paid to make it possible for us to stand up against the fears and challenges of the world around us, even to the point of following the example of Jesus in dying for the faith that has given us eternal life. Even though dying for a believers faith has always been an honorable way of serving the Lord, it has only become a reality for those of us in the western world in recent years. The media has done it’s best to flood us with accounts and stories of Christians who have been killed for their faith with the not so subtle pressure that others that live that way may soon be targeted as well.
God has a whole different perspective on what goes on when faithful people are allowed to be hated and hunted and even killed for their faith. Back in Isaiah’s time people were living with this same kind of pressure, but God put a whole new perspective on what he was up to. Isaiah wrote, Good people pass away; the godly often die before their time.(Isa.57:1) Even then the Enemy kept people in the dark. People would wonder why God wasn’t taking care of his own and then would not give it any more thought. He goes on to say, No one seems to understand that God is protecting them from the evil to come.(v.1) Our Enemy does his best to get us to think that life is only for time, and when we are dead and gone, we are done with life. When God takes his people home under any circumstance, he is giving us protection, not destruction. You see, For those who follow godly paths will rest in peace when they die.(v.2) When that was written the only sacrifice the Jewish people understood was that of the animal sacrifices for their sins, but now the Lord has given us an even greater privilege when we are willing to die as Jesus died as an act of love to show how much he loved even those who were controlled by their sins. Now people who live and die in this way are given the honor of Martyrs for their faith and will not only find peace, they will find an eternal reward for their faithfulness under fire. Dear Lord, please help us to be faithful to you no matter what the cost, and to honor those who pay this price with gladly for all the world to see.
Isaiah 57:1 Good people pass away; the godly often die before their time. But no one seems to care or wonder why. No one seems to understand that God is protecting them from the evil to come.2 For those who follow godly paths will rest in peace when they die.
Roy Wisner
