become like little children and believe exactly what He says we will be given the comfort and strength to live with our pain and suffering. God does keep His promises. Could you begin to trust Him?
Is there anything positive to live for in this world?
We each have a body, but more importantly we each have a character also. Even if the body is ravaged by suffering, the devil cannot spoil our character unless we allow him. Our character is made up of our thoughts and feelings about a situation. We can be angry, or bitter and it will show in our words and actions. OR we can claim His promises of help, and find unexpected peace. This power of choice and reasoning is something the devil cannot spoil.
To choose for God means the promise of a new life free from the pain and disablement of this world and God has promised to restore the years that the ‘canker worm and the locust’ have eaten. These are God’s symbols for the loss we have experienced, for the innocent who have suffered, for the young who have had their lives here spoiled by Satan’s evil. If they were on the side of God all their losses will be made up to them in a glorious way. If parents are on the side of God then their babies will be restored along with them themselves, when all is made new.
God says throughout the Bible, ‘choose whom ye will serve.’ He gives us a choice; he gives us information to base that choice on, and tells us the results of which ever choice we make. Good or bad. The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Romans 6:23. If we call someone Lord, then He is the One we have chosen to be loyal to. We follow and trust and obey.
You can see the sordid squalor of our world, with its hunger, flies, guns, bombs, wreckage, mutilation, syringes, gutters, empty fields, deserts, gravestones, hearses, rubble, and litter. Then look around you at faces when off guard, and what do you see? Faces of sighs, emptiness, hopelessness, anger, tension, hatred, frustration, stoical resignation, eyes filling with heartbreak and grief, pain and hurt. Eyes that say WHY? WHY? WHY?
Then look beyond all that to Calvary, and see Jesus on the cross, bearing that same suffering for us, in utter loneliness and rejection. But He said, ‘And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.’ He was lifted up on the cross. He came to take our death, to give us hope and bring an end to the hurts of the world. As He died He proclaimed - ‘It is finished!’ Satan is conquered. More than that He says ‘Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’
Still He waits, for each of us to take our burden to Him, to trust His promises, and to choose to be fully obedient to Him. He is not willing that any should perish. 2 Peter 3:9
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