Maintaining a Biblical Perspective In, Above, and Beyond the Bad News
Posted by David Wheaton | Saturday, July 24, 2010 | 6:52 am CT
Podcast: Download (Duration: 50:48 — 8.7MB)
“These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.” — Jesus Christ (John 16:33)
Watch the news, listen to talk radio, read the internet and you can come away borderline depressed at the situation in the world, America, and the church. Whether it is economic recession, government intrusion into our lives, or the general moral decay and continuing loss of religious freedom in our society, the tendency can be for Christians to hang their heads and ask, “What can I do about all this and is there any good news?”
Unfortunately, most churches seem blissfully unaware or impotent to help their congregants and instead focus on soft, trendy, and feel-good themes. On the other side, certain ministries seem to revel in the bad news giving short shrift to the good news and hope found in Scripture.
This weekend on The Christian Worldview, we will take a realistic look at some of the most troubling things Christians are facing but also look to Scripture for answers on how we should think and what we should do about it.
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The Christian Worldview Transcript
Date: July 24, 2010
Host: David Wheaton
Topic: Maintaining a Biblical Perspective In, Above and Beyond the News
DAVID WHEATON: Maintaining a Biblical Perspective In, Above and Beyond the News. That is the topic for today on The Christian Worldview where the mission is to think biblically about all matters of life and faith so that we can then live accordingly. And to share the Good News that Jesus Christ is who He claimed to be, the Way, the Truth and the Life and that His Word is both relevant and our basis for living in this modern world. I am David Wheaton, the host of The Christian Worldview. Our official website is TheChristianWorldview.com.
Our National Presenting Sponsor is Summit Ministries, the very best in Christian worldview resources, conferences and curricula. Their website is Summit.org. We are also supported by two other national sponsors, The Masters College and The S. Lewis Johnson Institute and of course, listeners like you.
So glad you joined me today on The Christian Worldview. We are going to talk about maintaining a biblical perspective in and above and beyond the bad news. If you watch the news, if you listen to too much conservative talk radio, if you read those e-mails coming in to your inbox all the time, you can come away borderline depressed at the state of the situation in the world and here in America and even in the church. Whether it is the economic recession, whether it is the increasing government intrusion into our lives or just a general moral decay of the culture or the impending continuing loss of religious freedom in our society, the tendency is for Christians to hang their heads. I know I feel it myself. We ask what can I do about all of this? This is unbelievable what is going on right now. Is there really any good news that I should be focusing on at the same time in the midst of this bad news? Unfortunately a lot of churches and many Christians seem blissfully unaware of what is going on. They don’t seem to want to be engaged in pushing back against it. Instead they focus on real soft or trendy of feel-good themes in the church. You get six days of bad news out in society and then when they come to church, they don’t want that seventh day to be bad news as well. You want it to be all about the good news. I understand that but too many Christians seem to be ignorant as to what is going on and when they do get some bad news, they have no idea how to process it at all.
This weekend on The Christian Worldview our goal is to maintain a biblical perspective in the midst of the bad news that is going on around us. We are going to look to Scripture to see if we should even be looking at the bad news. Should we be turning away from it? Should we be focusing only on the positive things? We will talk about that today.
The reason I bring this up is because two weeks ago, you will remember the interview I did with Jay Richards on apocalyptic economics and the road to revelation. Now it is a dramatic title of course but the point of the show was to talk about the economic situation going on in America and around the world and how everything is being set up for an even greater recession or depression. It is a whole changing economic dynamic around the world. When I went to church the next day, there is a man in our Sunday School class who came up to me after class and had a fairly serious look on his face and said, David I listen to your program regularly and appreciate it but I just can’t take all the bad news any more. He had heard Jay Richards talking about the economic situation and what is coming and how it is leading to the road of revelation. He said, I hear you, I understand, I agree with you but you have got to give me some good news. You have to tell me what to do.
I took that and said thank you for that. That is a good admonition because this is the challenge always as a talk radio host or anyone who is speaking to other people whether you are a pastor or whatever you do, the challenge for me that I sense all the times is to avoid one of two extremes. The first one is to rant or just pedal the bad news. By the way there is an audience for that. There are ministries that just focus on the bad news. Some people can feed on that. When there is worse new, that is good news for them because it proves everything is going down to the gutter. Everything is blowing apart. It is all gone. There is an audience for that and then just throw one verse in at the end. You have a 60 minute radio show and you spend 58 minutes ranting and pedaling the bad news and then one minute saying, keep your eyes looking up; Christ is coming again. There is no balance there at all.
The other extreme is to ignore reality. On the complete other side is where you don’t even look at the bad news. You turn away because it is so distasteful and I have felt that too. You often see it when you are watching some program on TV where children are starving in Africa or some animal is suffering, you don’t want to watch it. It is often our reaction with the bad news going on in society. The other thought is that we just want to focus on the positive. You have heard a lot of radio stations do this. You hear their little tagline or slogan will be, ‘uplifting, positive radio.’ As if there is just no way that we can focus on anything that is based in reality.
Those are the two extremes that I really try to avoid. I am not saying that I do it exactly right all the time, but this is the challenge that I find. It is like you have to be able to be adult enough, mature enough to be able to look at the bad news and say, I need to be informed to know what is going on but I also have to be able to know how to process it so I don’t get into some depression about the state of events in the world. On the other hand, I don’t run around with this sugarcoated, cotton candy, positivism that is totally unrealistic.
That is the goal, which is our slogan, to think biblically about what is going on so we can live accordingly. I think Christians should be able to process the bad news around them and have a biblical perspective about it and not get discouraged or get unrealistically optimistic.
As I thought about this topic today and I think it is an important one because there are several things going on right now that I think Christians look at, including myself, and think wow, there is a lot of bad news going on right now. If you focus too much on it, it gets you down; it gets you discouraged. I thought about what are the three things that I think touch a nerve with Christians that get them feeling depressed? The three things are these. The first one is the direction of government, the direction of the American government specifically. I have two articles here and I am just going to read brief portions of them. One is by a man named Wayne Allyn Root. I believe he was the Libertarian Vice Presidential candidate in the 2008 general election. He wrote this article called, Overwhelm the System. I am just going to read the first paragraph regarding what he writes about President Obama. He says, “Barack Obama is no fool. He is not incompetent. To the contrary, he is brilliant. He knows exactly what he is doing. He is purposely overwhelming the U.S. economy to create systemic failure, economic chaos and social chaos, thereby destroying capitalism and our country from within. Barack Obama is my college classmate from Columbia University class of 83. As Glen Beck correctly predicted from day one, Obama is following the plan of Cloward and Piven (we have talked about this before; two professors who taught at Columbia University). They outlined a plan to socialize America by overwhelming the system with government spending and entitlement demands, add up the clues below.” (He talks about universal health care, cap and trade, making Puerto Rico a state, legalizing 12 million illegal immigrants, the stimulus programs, the bailouts, raising taxes on small business owners. He talks about all those things and how it stresses the government so much. )
He goes on to say, “Taken individually those things are alarming, taken as a whole it is a brilliant Machiavellian game plan to turn the United States into a socialist, Marxist state with a permanent majority that desperately needs government for survival and can be counted on to always vote for bigger government. Why not? They have no responsibility to pay for bigger government.”
In other words, you stress the economy so bad that the only person who can save the country is government because they have the most money; they have the most services to help people. You get more than 50% of the people not even paying taxes to the government and you have a permanent voting block for yourself.
This is what Wayne Allyn Root says is going on in this country. You hear that and you think this is really a bad state of affairs. I don’t want America to go like this. Look at what a great country this has been. I don’t want it to go that way. Now you might think that Wayne Allyn Root is some sort of ultra-conservative, a devil behind every tree and he is a racist because he doesn’t like President Obama. You would be incorrect.
Just to add one more little column to this. I got the recent Grace Partner letter from Grace to You, which is a letter John MacArthur sends to his supporters through the mail every month. John MacArthur, as you know, is not someone who peddles very much at all in politics. He rarely talks about political things. He focuses on preaching the word of God, one verse at a time. Here is his letter from July. He says, “You don’t have to be a trained economist to realize that these are extremely tough times. Financial uncertainty permeates our culture from Wall Street to Main Street and it effects every one of us in some way or another.” He talks about wages being tight, unemployment is soaring, students are graduating with advanced degrees from the best colleges having trouble getting jobs, relentless news of foreclosures, people have lost discretionary income, anxiety is high, taxes are high, too that is because the federal government is accumulating debt. He talks about national governments worldwide are similarly mired in debt. He talks about the oilrig disaster. He talks about the size of the U.S. government and the massive web of government regulations have grown exponentially since September 11, 2001. While Washington is steadily taking control of business industry our courts and legislators are putting more limitations on individual freedoms. We have seen the erosion of religious freedom and aggressive attempts to stifle God and His word in the public arena. There is no end in sight for most of those trends.
This isn’t just fringe people who are involved in politics saying things are bad. This is someone like John MacArthur who normally doesn’t even touch on some of these things. He is saying that things are really difficult right now. I am going to read you some of the rest of his story when we come back from the break. He set up this letter by saying that there is a lot of bad news and he is not ignoring it. I think this first point about the direction of government is one of the narratives, the stories in our lives that make Christians feel very negative. We heard this before the election . . .
Barack Obama: We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.
Who says that? Who says we are going to fundamentally transform America. You think, we may want a little change, but do we want the nation fundamentally transformed? Do we want June to be declared by the President of the United States the national celebration of Lesbian, Gay, Transsexual, Bi-gender Month with the highest office of the land celebrating this? It has fostered hopelessness and helplessness in believers to see the direction of the government. When we come back I will give you the second and third things that have depressed Christians. Then we are going to get on how to maintain a biblical perspective in, above and beyond the bad news.
(break)
DAVID: Striving to be biblically correct, not politically correct. Welcome back to The Christian Worldview radio program. Our Website is TheChristianWorldview.com. In the first segment I talked about the first of the three things that really gets Christians down. The first one is the direction of the American government right now. We see everything changing. President Obama said that he is going to fundamentally transform the United States of America and that is what he is doing. There is no question about it. It is going on a quicker path than it has ever gone on. As a matter of fact, I think this particular sound bite was the one when the man at church talked to us and said, you have got to give me some good news, you have to tell me what to do about all of this. When you hear a sound bite like this from the President after so much change has happened so quickly, you start to wonder if it is really going to end.
President Obama: One of the interesting things that has happened over the last 18 months as President is for some reason people keep on being surprised when I do what I said I was going to do. So I say I am going to reform our health care system and people think well gosh that’s not smart politics, maybe we should hold off. Or I say we are going to move forward on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell and somehow people say, why are you doing that? I am not sure that is good politics. I am doing it because I said I was going to do it and I think it is the right thing to do. People should learn that lesson about me because next year when I start presenting some very difficult choices to the country, I hope some of these folks who are hollering about deficits and debt step up because I am calling their bluff. We will see how much of the political arguments they are making right now are real and how much of it was just politics. All right? Thank you very much everybody.
DAVID: So there is the President throwing down the gauntlet and saying, if you think there is a lot of change now, overhaul of the financial regulation bill that just passed that overhauls the way we do business in this country, the health care, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, you name it, that is nothing. Just wait until next year. Christians hear that and are getting further and further depressed by this seemingly bad news because he has the most unbiblical worldview of any President we have ever had, at least that I know about. That is the first thing, the direction of the government.
The second thing is the depravity that is going on within our culture. That is the second thing that gets Christians depressed. I pick these three because they can depress me, so I figure if they are depressing me and I am a normal Christian and I have talked to other people about some of these things, I can tell they are depressed by these things. We look at what is on television. We can hardly watch a show on television during prime time because there is so much junk in the program. How do you take your kids to the movies? It is like walking through a minefield. The music industry now, the educational system, talk about promoting a humanistic worldview. This is all the public education system does. The promotion of immorality within our culture, whether it is heterosexual, whether it is homosexual; biblical morality and moral purity and marriage are way out and way over. The promotion of same-sex marriage, living together before you are married, having children out of wedlock, there is just no stigma. Some news story out of the National Security Department this week says the computers are being used for sending child porn. You think, what is going on in our culture? You look at Wall Street and the immoral practices there that partially led to this financial meltdown we had. You think the corporate people are all corrupt from within. It is like this huge, gigantic tsunami that is coming at your, a huge wave, that is pushing and promoting these anti-Christian, non-Christian values and you are thinking I have to duck under this to avoid it. It is an affront to your very being. You are exasperated about trying to raise your kids in what can only be described as a cesspool culture. Then the worse thing is all of a sudden when they are teenagers or they are in their 20s, unfortunately and sadly, some of them go down this cultural path and it is very depressing.
So if it is not the direction of our American government, it is not the depravity of the culture, it is number three, the denigration of Christianity in the church itself. I don’t know if you have been hearing some of this change in verbiage, the change in language being used by President Obama and Hilary Clinton about the freedom of worship versus the freedom of religion. We have the freedom of religion enshrined in our Constitution, the very First Amendment. Now they don’t talk things in terms of having freedom of religion in America, which means we have the freedom to practice our religion, everything from worshipping and going to church to evangelizing and gathering together for Bible studies or whatever. If you will notice he is not using freedom of religion any more, he is talking about we have the freedom of worship. What is the difference? That is a huge difference. Freedom of worship means you can do what you want to do in your church, you can worship, but keep it to yourself. Don’t go out and proselytize and share it with anybody beyond you. You have the freedom to worship individually but the freedom of religion goes way beyond the freedom of worship.
The freedom of speech and association cases on college campuses where now more and more the noose is tightening. If an organization is going to be officially recognized by the University, it can’t have a “non-discrimination policy” in hiring. So if you are a Christian organization and you want to hire Christians because you are a Christian organization that is discriminatory. If you are a student in college and you oppose the changing of the definition of marriage, you are homophobic and racist and you are a hater. The fact that you want to keep marriage the way it has been for all of history, you are behind the times. Society is becoming more and more secular and thus more and more hostile to Christians. The church seems to be a little bit impotent and weak to do anything about this.
Then all of a sudden you have encountered these things, the direction of government, the depravity of culture and the denigration of Christianity in the church within our society and you wonder if anyone really thinks like me any more; does anyone think any of this is wrong? You feel isolated and you think you are alone. You don’t know if there is anyone else who thinks like you and maybe you think your worldview is passé. Then you get depressed and you get discouraged. That is the bad news.
We took a realistic look out there and there are some bad things going on. The question I want to spend the rest of the program on and get your comment on is this, how do we maintain a biblical perspective in the midst of the bad news, above the bad news and beyond the bad news? What do you do as far as encountering the bad news? Do you watch it; do you turn away? When you do get the bad news of what is going on in the world, what do you do about it? What do you remind yourself of so you don’t get depressed?
I have three things here that I think are critically important that we as Christians need to do. I am going to touch on the first one briefly before the break. The first thing to do to maintain a biblical perspective amidst the bad news is to understand that we live in a very sinful and evil world. Sometimes we think we live in America and it is a beautiful day outside, there is no violence right outside our home and it is a nice place to live. We get this sense that the world is a really nice place and it can be but I don’t think we should think in some world where there is going to be a lot of bad news. We have a lot of sin nature in the world including ourselves, so we shouldn’t be shocked by the bad news or ignore it. We should expect sinners to be sinful in this sinful world and we shouldn’t be shocked.
(break)
DAVID: We are talking today about maintaining a biblical perspective in, above and beyond the bad news. We spent a little less than half of the program talking about some of the bad news. We are going to spend a little more than half talking about how to maintain this biblical perspective in it.
Before the break, we started to answer the question about how to maintain a biblical perspective in the midst of this bad news. The first point I gave is to understand that we live in a very sinful, evil world. Our expectations should not be too high for how good the world should be.
I am going to read this verse from John 16:33 and this really says it all. This is Jesus Christ talking and He said this, These things I have spoken to you so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation but take courage, I have overcome the world. That is exactly the case. In Christ you can have peace because you know you are in a right relationship with your Creator through His Son, Jesus Christ. Your sins have been forgiven. You have hope for this life from a standpoint of having peace in this life and hope for the next life to have eternal life with Him. You can have peace with Christ, but He says in the world you will have tribulation. Expect it. This is the way it is. There is sin and evil in the world. You will have tribulation in the world but take courage, I have overcome the world.
I don’t really need to read too many other verses, although I have a lot of them and I will read some of them but that says it all. Expect that this is a very sinful world. Why are we surprised or discouraged by what is going on in the world? You look at the situation in Revelation and we don’t see a time when Christians are going to be taking “dominion” or winning back the culture or the world is going to be one to Christ. We don’t see that. Until the return of Christ when He comes to rule and reign, yes, but during this particular age, there is no evidence in Scripture that there is going to be something we can be really encouraged about the direction of mankind in the world.
Be realistic. America has been uniquely great, one of the only examples of a great nation because there are so many Christians in the founding back then. We have it far better than the first century. Think about the little freedom they had then, the Totalitarian government, the harsh persecution of Christians, the pluralistic culture. Compare then to now and you think we are living in Nirvana compared to what it was in the first century, yet the early Christians lived with great passion, purpose and joy. They were actually thankful for their trials. James 1:2-4, Consider is all joy my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
This is saying that not only should you not be discouraged and depressed with bad news or trials you are encountering in your culture or your government. You should be thankful for them. You should consider it joy to encounter these trials because you know it is going to perfect your faith if you respond to it the right way.
There is nothing wrong with weeping over bad news. Christ wept when he saw the people and the sinfulness of the crowd and the culture and what had happened. He wept. There is nothing wrong with feeling badly about it. It is not a wrong response to feel angst. I think that is normal actually. It is ok to feel badly about what is going on but then we need to quickly do something else. That is number two and three.
Before we get to those, let’s go to our callers. Alex welcome to The Christian Worldview. How do you maintain a biblical perspective in, above and beyond the bad news?
ALEX: First of all, awesome program, really good program. I think overall I would have to say a couple of things. Number one, we are told to be joyful. Now that being said, it is hard to appreciate the beauty of the stream when you are knee deep in alligators. I think the only thing that is going to get me through this is a consistent look in the word. Keep reading, keep reading. I am an end times prophecy guy so I am constantly thinking, this is all going to a purpose and God is in control and not the world. Greater is He in me than he is in the world and I like the scriptures you quoted. A lot of times I look up into the clouds and I have an active imagination, I am an artist in the Twin Cities and I imagine Christ coming down and watching Him come through the clouds.
DAVID: You aren’t going to imagine it too much because that is exactly how it is going to happen. You bring up excellent points about understanding the end times and I will get into that a little bit. You can see things setting themselves up for this world system. They are talking about world currencies, global government and that is what Revelation says. This is not something that should shock us. As a matter of fact, we should realize that God is sovereign and He is working His plan all through this.
Let’s go next to Muskegon, Michigan and Ruth how do you maintain a biblical perspective in the midst of all the bad news?
RUTH: I think that some of the Old Testament stories are so encouraging. The example of when Gideon went and God only wanted 300 men to go against 50,000 and they had such victory and power. When I read back some of the Scripture in prayer, there is such power. One example in Ephesians 3, Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask of think according to the power at work with us. To Him be glory throughout all generations forever and ever. I think that is just powerful when we listen to programs like yours and get encouraged that other people all through the United States have the same goals.
DAVID: Ruth, I appreciate your call and I appreciate your comment on the program as well. That is by God’s grace and I think that is one of the purposes of church and fellowship, to encourage and comfort one another in the Lord. That is why it is important. I know that I want to be someone who is realistic about what is going on, is informed myself and informs you about what is going on and I want to have a biblical perspective. I don’t want to fall into one of those two extremes of just being a peddler of bad news and ranting about how everything is going down hill. I don’t want to do that every week. I know occasionally I can slip over to that side. Or the other side, I am not someone who is sugary, everything is getting better and you can see everything collapsing around us and think it is a great day outside. I don’t tend to go to that side; I tend to go to the other side, but I want to be balanced in the way I present things.
I am hearing a common theme here in how to maintain a biblical perspective and that is to go to the word. I think that is a very important answer.
Let’s go next to Columbus, Mississippi and Don how do you maintain a biblical perspective in the midst of all this bad news?
DON: I am a first time caller and I want to tell you it is nice to hear a channel that is speaking about Christ and have open comments like that. You have to monitor what is going on. You cannot not watch it. You have to see what is going on. I always call on the Lord and the Lord being part of our spirit and this is hell on earth. The world is given up to the devil. It is just more predominant nowadays. It is more in your face. It is unbelievable. The more you watch TV, the more you turn channels and monitor everything that is going on. I just call on the Lord. That is the only way to get by.
DAVID: You look around and say this is unbelievable, yet you also have to think that there are other times in history that have been far worse. It is just that we are used to a certain type of life in America, certain freedoms. It has been a largely Christian nation. All of a sudden things are changing and changing so rapidly, it is shocking. Your comment at the beginning that you have to watch the news, I am glad you think that way but a lot of Christians don’t. They just avoid it because it is unpleasant. If I don’t watch it, then it is not there.
My first point about how to maintain a biblical perspective in the midst of bad news was to understand that we live in a very sinful, evil world and not overestimate what the world should be like. It is like the verse from John 16:33, Christ says that in the world you have tribulation. It is going to be there, expect it, don’t be surprised, don’t be discouraged. Consider is all joy when you face various trials but take courage, Christ said, I have overcome the world.
Number two is to set your mind on things above the bad news in the world, not things on the earth. This is such a key passage of Scripture. In the midst of all the bad news it says in Colossians 3:1-4, If then you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory.
In other words, if you are looking at the news of the world and you are getting depressed and you can’t pull out of it, your mind is not set on things above. You are setting your mind too much on the things on the earth.
(break)
DAVID: We set up the show by saying there is a lot of bad news going on. Christians get depressed about things like the direction of the government, the depravity of the culture, the denigration of Christianity in the church and we spent nearly half of the program talking about that. We have been spending the second half saying, ok there is a lot of bad news but how do we deal with it? How do we respond to it? How do we process it?
The first point was to understand that we live in a very sinful, evil world. We should not be shocked by the crazy things that go on that are so much of an affront from a biblical perspective. My friend, talk show host Todd Friel likes to say, the pagans are being pagans again. When you are unregenerate, you live according to your own lust of your flesh and indulging desires of your mind in the flesh and are by nature children of wrath.
Ephesians 2, this is the way it is so don’t be shocked but immediately when you see it, go to point 2 which is to set your mind as Colossians 3 says, set your mind on things above not on the things that are on earth. Our minds should not be focused or set primarily on political change because we know it is worthwhile but it ultimately is not the answer to things. Our minds shouldn’t be primarily set on cultural change either because that is getting the cart before the horse. Our minds need to be set on spiritual things, set on things above not filled with everything going on here on earth.
Truly if your are listening to conservative talk radio all day and they are ranting about the President and how things are going downhill, listen to a little bit of it but you can’t take that in as your complete diet as a Christian. When I listen a little too much over and over again, it confirms on where things are going but if you focus too much on things of the earth, you get depressed. Set your mind on things above, on serving God, on knowing Him better, on being more sanctified and holy, on helping your family, on serving in your church, on sharing your faith, on praying to God for help. There are lots of things to focus and set our minds on things above.
Then what happens is you change, your family changes, your church changes, culture changes and then government changes if we get it in the right order and the right priority. As it says in James, we are commanded to be thankful in all things for we have a lot to be thankful for. A thankful person isn’t a depressed person. It says in 1 Thessalonians 5:18, in everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. When you are thinking of things you can be thankful for, even in our country we have things to be thankful for. We have a lot of freedom left in this country, freedom to worship, and freedom to evangelize. We are not being killed. I see these articles coming in where Christians are being killed in the Muslim parts of the world for purportedly denigrating the prophet Muhammad according to the executioners. We are not facing that yet. We still have a lot of freedoms; we still have a lot of things that we are able to do. We have lots of things to be thankful for and we should even be thankful for our trials. Anxiety and depression come from setting your mind on things on the earth not on things above.
Matthew 6, don’t be anxious for anything. Let your requests be known to God and set your mind on things above. Paul in the Roman prison, he wasn’t depressed. He knew the end was coming but he wasn’t depressed. What did he say? But for me to live as Christ and to die is gain. The key point of the day is to set your mind on things above.
The third one is this, to know what will happen beyond the world. That is what one of our previous callers was talking about and that goes back to 1 Thessalonians 4 where we see what is coming in the future. I believe this refers to the rapture of the church, some people would interpret it differently, but let’s just agree that Christ is returning as the caller mentioned, in the clouds. 1 Thessalonians 4:14-18, For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus. For this we say to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, and remain until the coming of the Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and thus we shall always be with the Lord. Therefore comfort one another with these words.
It says something similar in Luke 21:26-28 about the return of the Lord. This is our hope and our comfort. Yes we are required to live here as long as we are alive in this sinful world, but Christ said we can overcome the world by setting our mind on things above and also having that hope; knowing what is to come in the future.
We need to be constantly reminding ourselves of these things. We can’t just think it once this morning and let it go. Our minds will naturally drift down to the common denominator of being depressed and discouraged about what is going on. That is why we need to be in the word on a daily basis. Romans 12 says you need to be in the word daily so that your mind can be renewed. Renewed means it needs to be new again. Renewed, otherwise it gives in and collapses due to the weight of bad news around us. There are lots of things for us to do as Christians. We can, in any type of society fulfill our Christian responsibilities to God and any type of government situation.
Let’s go to Mobile, Alabama and Richard how do you maintain a biblical perspective in, above and beyond the bad news?
RICHARD: As you have said, by focusing on the things above. We can focus on the adversity in our lives and they will consume us like a pit bull around our neck or we can look beyond adversities to the miraculous things God is doing in our lives. I believe God allows adversity in our lives to draw us closer to Him. Anything that moves a person closer to God is good. I use Scripture threads to help me at times like this. A thread where you tie verses together such as 2 Corinthians 5:20 where you are called to ambassadors to Christ. Most people when things get critical, they are ambassadors for crisis and not of Christ. I always have to mindful that man plans his way but the Lord directs His steps because He knows everything we need to step on to teach us what we need to know to equip us for the good works He has prepared beforehand for us to walk in. Those good works are to glorify Him and point others to Him and that is why we can exalt in our tribulations according to Romans 5:3 knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance.
DAVID: Great comments about knowing what is going on, setting your mind on things above, not on things on earth and then knowing what is going to happen beyond the world. You know Christian we do live in a changing and challenging world, that is for sure, but there is one thing you should set your mind on Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever.
