"Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life." (John 5:24 KJV)
"Be careful then, dear brothers and sisters. Make sure that your own hearts are not evil and unbelieving, turning you away from the living God. You must warn each other every day, while it is still "today," so that none of you will be deceived by sin and hardened against God. For if we are faithful to the end, trusting God just as firmly as when we first believed, we will share in all that belongs to Christ. Remember what it says: "Today when you hear his voice, don't harden your hearts as Israel did when they rebelled."" (Hebrews 4:13-15 NLT)
Did you not know, God loves you? That might be a strange question, yet it is one that I believe we will all face, but up close and personal! As much as I might complain about some of my everyday trials and work related issues, there is nothing that is even close to what some of my brothers and sisters might be going though, just trying to stay alive!
Imagine for a moment that you were in the place of someone who is being hunted down or is facing some sort of punishment for what they believe; what would you do? That is not a trick question, it is actually a means to try and get us to think about where our priorities are, and maybe, just maybe, we might do all that we can to strengthen our resolve.
To that, I must confess, that I can seriously put my foot dome, saying how much I will practice being patient and not loose my composure, and no sooner as I make that choice, I am faced with something that causes me do not exactly what I just set out to not do. It is almost as if the thought of not doing something, becomes the trigger that makes me do, whatever I just reminded myself not to do!
That said, I can say with a heart of experience and repeated assurance, the little issues that get under my skin are harder for me to deal with than the big catastrophic issues; because those big issues get given immediately to God! Therefore I am well aware of where I stand: I stand! Just as Paul has said, "Stand therefore!" because we absolutely must!
Consequentially, we have to make a choice; which is the whole purpose of standing in the first place. When we are in Christ, and He in us, we have something amazingly powerful, that is not even known or even realized until it is actually put into action. This is the whole point to faith being tested, because it is not known what will be, until it has been done; but we can know what will ultimately happen, because God has already shown us...
"That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day. For our present troubles are small and won't last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever! So we don't look at the troubles we can see now; rather, we fix our gaze on the things that cannot be see. For the things we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever." (2 Corinthians 4:16-18 NLT)
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