where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?
I Peter 4:18
Again the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, speak to the children of thy people, and say unto them, When I bring the sword upon a land, if the people of the land take a man of their coasts, and set him for their watchman: If when he seeth the sword come upon the land, he blow the trumpet, and warn the people; Then whosoever heareth the sound of the trumpet, and taketh not warning; if the sword come, and take him away, his blood shall be upon his own head. He heard the sound of the trumpet, and took not warning; his blood shall be upon him. But he that taketh warning shall deliver his soul. But if the watchman see the sword come, and blow not the trumpet, and the people be not warned; if the sword come, and take any person from among them, he is taken away in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at the watchman's hand. When I say unto the wicked, O wicked man, thou shalt surely die; if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thine hand. Nevertheless, if thou warn the wicked of his way to turn from it; if he do not turn from his way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast delivered thy soul. Ezekiel 33:1-6;8,9.
NORMAL is the sad state of apathy into which we as individuals, and collectively as a nation, have allowed ourselves to settle. The ONLY area of our lives in which we are not apathetic is in the acquisition of materialistic items, all the while knowing full well While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal. I Corinthians 4:18. We ignore and neglect our eternal souls in our frantic pace of "one upmanship"--to have more, newer, better, costlier, than others around us.
Back To Normal? I pray NOT if...
NORMAL means we continue to practice isolationism, reserving true CHRISTian charity ONLY for times of direst straits, refusing to reach out in loving compassion to those around us. Oh, that's right, we do make one exception, annually: at "Christmas", but even then it's limited to 24 hours at most and then only if we have what we want, first! It's only if by giving to others we don't have to give up anything ourselves--if it doesn't cause us to have to make any sacrifice. Where is the love of Christ that so many of us "profess to possess" in that? I ask you, how is it that at a time of greatest stress and highest levels of suspicion, people who never saw one another before, knew nothing of one another other than a name, of different races and cultural backgrounds, could come together to rent vehicles and travel together from one coast to another, but we cannot speak to a stranger behind us in line at Wal-Mart on a "average" day?
Back To Normal? I pray NOT if...
NORMAL means we go on ignoring our everyday and hometown "heroes", who give of themselves daily for our safety and well-being, because it is not on the grand scale of the rescue attempts at the two World Trade Towers! Certainly, ALL those who rushed into the chaos and devastation of September 11, 2001 without thought for their own personal safety were "heroes" along with those on the aircrafts who cried out to God for added strength as they undertook to thwart the evil plans that had been set in motion, but look around you: there are EVERYDAY heroes in virtually every city of this great nation who operate under the same principles and conditions, only on a smaller scale. Do we ever stop to think they would be greatly encouraged in their job duties by a simple word of thanks from us?
Back To Normal? I pray NOT if...
NORMAL means we revert to the same old behaviors: petty bickering, laziness, lack of enthusiasm for the history of this great nation, the principles upon which it was founded and which should forever be carried on to preserve the freedoms so many have given their very lives to uphold! Freedom is NOT free and only the VERY foolish could think so. Freedom is not attained by merely wishing for it--it is ONLY through the actions of those willing to do whatever it takes to preserve the freedoms for which this great nation was established--then and only then can we sing, "Let freedom ring".
What is freedom worth to you? To be able to get in your vehicle and travel wherever you wish to go in this country; to speak your thoughts, whether favorable or unfavorable about those in office; to get an education if you are willing to study for it; to attend the church of your choice, visit your loved ones, elect or reject leaders, enact legislation... Oh sure, there are many ills within this great nation--things that need to be corrected, and rethought, and even re-learned, but without freedom, improvements will never happen. Without freedom, the only thing you have is repression, NOT expression.
Back To Normal? I pray NOT if...
NORMAL means that the salary we are paid for the jobs we do dictates our personal integrity. THAT should NEVER be the case! Part of the reason for a lot of the ills in this country are because folks have lowered their own personal standards! We see it time after time after time: more and more money poured into this bailout or that one, with no measureable improvement in services offered or safety concerns. Each and EVERY ONE of us need to meet each day with the determination that we will do our HONEST best at whatever we do. Not just pay lip service to "doing our best", but ACTUALLY and HONESTLY do it! It is a sad state of affairs when we have to be bought--yes, bribed, to do a "good job"!
Greatness has NEVER been achieved through laziness. Those whom we most admire are those who were willing to strive, risk failure, overcome adversity, endure ridicule. They believed in that which they were trying to accomplish and allowed nothing to deter them from their goals, even if it meant giving their lives for that which they believed in. That's not the theory of "radical Islamics": Dr. Martin Luther King and President Abraham Lincoln, to name only two--neither of which were Islamic. And let's not so quickly forget all those who have given their lives in service to mankind--whether on foreign fields of battle or on American soil: firefighters, police officers and other emergency personnel who, without regard for their own personal safety, rushed INTO danger to rescue untold numbers of people. Then we have our "regular, everyday Joes and Janes" on those flights who knew they were living their last moments, yet still reached beyond themselves to do what they could, ALL they could, for others. You want HIGH STANDARDS re-established in this country? There they are! Can the rest of us honor their memory by living up to them?
Back To Normal? I pray NOT if...
NORMAL means that we continue to dummy down people! Whose idea was that anyway? Shame, shame on us, ALL of us, for allowing it to happen! Talk about a GREAT hypocrisy? Just who are those so arrogant and pompous that we have allowed to persuade us that a person's background sets in stone a low-level ability to learn or limits their intelligence? THAT is how people ARE held back, limited, contained, controlled: by refusing to allow them the opportunity to learn ALL they can simply because of where they were born, the environment in which they grew up. How many more "reasons" are we going to invent so folks won't strive to be their very best? Yet we "say" we do not discriminate? We need to QUIT LYING! The phrase, "We do not discriminate based on a person's ____________" is one of the greatest hypocrisies ever perpetuated in this country! There are many things that COULD BE overcome if we refused to limit ourselves to someone else's stilted, racist, so-called "religious" opinion! No, not all of us will be on the "dean's list"--not all of us are geniuses; we won't achieve at the same rate or in the same amounts, but if we'd get past sinful, harmful, self-destructive pride, we could teach AND we could be taught FAR more than we've settled for in the past. ALL of us could, if we only would, reach out a helping hand to someone who needs a hand UP, not a "handout"!
Back To Normal? I pray NOT if...
NORMAL means that we continue to lazily and irresponsibly settle for "meets the government's standards" that so many producers of goods tout. Are those standards truly worthy of the trust we place in them? Just recently we have seen irrefutable proof that such standards were woefully inadequate, yet so many hide behind the phrase, "We meet the government's standards." Everyone of us need to be wary of any company or manufacturer that is willing to go ONLY that far when we know full well that there are many instances when those standards are unsafe and too low to ensure the public's safety! What about personal integrity, my friends? We have rented ourselves out cheap to the lower, lesser concept that our "return", the profit we make is more important than the QUALITY we require. And oh what a price we pay!
That doesn't mean that the cost of goods would immediately skyrocket--it does mean that those interested only in their "return", their "profit" would have less padding in their selfish, self-centered pockets. How many jobs of hard workers in this country have been sent to other countries in which the wages are much less than here, merely so the "stockholders" could maintain a high rate of profit? Are we truly so interested in only certain overpriced (and over-rated) brand names (not even produced in this country any longer) that we are unwilling to try the lesser known products that ARE produced here? We might be amazed at the quality we are missing. Sure, it is necessary that we import and export, but should it be at the cost of those who labor day in and day out here in the United States? You want to boost the morale of United States' workers? Give them work by buying the products THEY produce, not just some brand name merely for the label it bears!
Let me put it this way: How many appeals have we heard in the past two-three weeks for people to come to New York and "spend money" there to boost the economy in that city? Well? You can't spend money in Memphis and expect to get the results that spending money directly in New York City would do! The same goes for the United States: you want to "boost the economy" of this great nation in which we live? You want to "invest in America"? Then do business with those who produce AMERICAN products here in America, those who conduct their business here in America! Not to the exclusion of all others, but let's make certain, FOR A CHANGE, that we SUPPORT OUR America! To ALL who live here, to ALL who come here to live, This is OUR country! Let's take some pride in it, and let it last a bit longer than some current "fad" of flag-waving.
Back To Normal? I pray NOT if...
NORMAL means we place all our trust and faith in technology and/or weaponry--that which MAN can do for us! To place all our trust and faith in such things will NOT be enough to sustain us, strengthen us, or save our eternal souls, my friends. Never before have we seen that so vividly proven than in the recent events. We do not have the ability within ourselves to accomplish all that needs to be accomplished for our country, or even for ourselves as individuals, on either a physical or spiritual level. If ever we have been sincere with God, NOW is the time to do so. We are facing many things in both our immediate and "long-term" (however long or short that may be) future that we have never before faced, and if we fail to trust in God, we will find ourselves in a state of failure beyond anything history ever recorded.
How many decades have we heard warning after warning--few that we heeded--most we did not? From generation to generation, there have been warnings given both to those who professed to know God and those who refused to know God--yet time after time, as did the Israelites of Old, we have failed to listen to "the watchmen". We have a "memory of convenience"--when it serves our agenda, we suddenly remember something from 'way back yonder. When it will give us no personal gain, we consider history a waste of time and along with all the lessons learned, it is pushed further back into the cobwebs of long ago: we relegate it to the dusty files of "that's not for today".
Those "old-fashioned" standards of total commitment to God that we have abandoned need to be revived in our lives, my friends.
Thus saith the Lord, STAND ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the OLD paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and YE SHALL FIND REST FOR YOUR SOULS. But they said, We will not walk therein. Also I set watchmen over you, saying, Hearken to the sound of the trumpet. But they said, We will not hearken. Therefore hear, ye nations, and know, O congregation, what is among them. Hear, O earth: behold, I will bring evil upon this people, even the fruit of their thoughts, because they have not hearkened unto my words, nor to my law, but rejected it. Jeremiah 6:16-19.My friends, the manner in which these attacks were launched upon us may have taken us by surprise, but we know evil exists in this world. We've had the warnings from the Word of God all along, yet we have chosen to ignore them, taking on a "Titanic" or "Not Me" state of mind--otherwise known as the "Infallibility Factor". We have allowed "I've still got plenty of time" to creep in and then firmly establish residence in our way of thinking, only to find ourselves spiritually bankrupt at a time when we most need the comforting reassurance of God's Word to us.
Through all manner of devices, soothsayers, seers, and so-called "prophets" we keep trying to pinpoint the day and the hour in which "calamity" will strike. Know this:
But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety; THEN sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape...NOW LOOK AT THIS:
But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day: we are not of the night, nor of darkness. Therefore let us not sleep, as do others; but let us watch and be sober. For they that sleep sleep in the night; and they that be drunken are drunken in the night. But let us, who are of the day, be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love; and for an helmet, the hope of salvation. I Thessalonians 5:1-8.Did you get it? Did you see it there? For whom is the "day of the Lord" coming "as a thief in the night"? NOT for those who are SERVING Christ, but those who are stumbling about in the darkness of sin. Even as we await our Lord's coming, many are called from this life every day who do not know Him as Lord and Savior. Never before in the history of mankind has there been so GREAT a need for each of us who DO know Him to witness, to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ at EVERY available opportunity.
Can we "afford" to be ashamed of Him, to be so selfish as to not share the ETERNAL HOPE that He offers through salvation?
For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels. Mark 8:36-38.With all that we see going on about us, are we STILL going to shrink from our TRUE Christian duty--that which each and every one of us who claim Him as Savior--have been charged with doing?
Are we STILL going to be too busy to STUDY the Word of God, to spend time in prayer and admonition before the Lord?
If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye; for the spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you: on their part he is evil spoken of, but on your part he is glorified. But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer, or as a busybody in other men's matters. Yet if any man suffer as a CHRISTian, let him NOT be ashamed; but let him glorify God on this behalf. For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? And if the RIGHTEOUS scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? Wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator. I Peter 4: 14-19.Are we willing to stand fast for Christ?
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8:35-39.
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