Chuck McCament In the same way, the difficulties, losses, pressures, intimidation of this world cannot cause us to fear and fail if we’ll look up to Jesus because He’s already reached the top. He’s paved the way. He’s saying, “No problem. I’ve made it. Come on up!”
Things that facilitate celebrating the goodness of our loving God are good, inspiring music, revering our wonderful God by simply following His plans laid out in Scripture, acknowledging that overall, life truly is good, having a good laugh occasionally
If we say we’re intimate with God yet walk continually and deliberately in disobedience to Him, we are lying hypocrites. “God is light,” writes John. As light, He reveals to us right and wrong. To maintain our fellowship with Him, we are to respond to that light continually; we are to be open, honest, and sincere about where we are. The standard we are to conform to is the light God sheds on our path, day by day, through His Word and the promptings of His Spirit.
“This Bible is God’s Bible; and when I see it, I seem to hear a voice springing up from it, saying ‘I am the Book of God. Man, read me. I am God’s writing. Study my pages, for I was penned by God. Love me, for He is my Author, and you will see Him visible and manifest everywhere.’”
How many times we find this expression in the Scriptures, and yet it is just this very thing that we are so prone to lose sight of! We know it is written ‘The living God’; but in our daily life, there is scarcely anything we practically so much lose sight of like the fact that God is the LIVING GOD; that He is now whatever He was three or four thousand years since; that He has the same sovereign power, the same saving love toward those who love and serve Him as ever He had, and that He will do for them now what He did for others two, three, four thousand years ago, simply because He is the living God, the unchanging One. Oh, how therefore we should confide in Him, and in our darkest moments never lose sight of the fact that He is still and ever will be the LIVING GOD.
Often God seems to place His children in positions of profound difficulty — leading them into a wedge from which there is no escape; contriving a situation which no human judgment would have permitted, had it been previously consulted. The very cloud conducts them thither. You may be thus involved at this very hour. It does seem perplexing and profoundly serious to the last degree; but it is perfectly right. The issue will more than justify Him who has brought you hither. It is a platform for the display of His almighty grace and power. He will not only deliver you, but in doing so He will give you a lesson that you will never forget; and to which, in many a psalm and song in after days, you will revert. You will never be able to thank God enough for having done just as He has.
You see, no matter what you believe you are still exercising faith that what you are investing your life in is true and has lasting value. Obviously, the bigger risk-taker is the atheist since he/she is gambling that Jesus lied (some even deny He ever existed) and that the Bible bears false testimony as to the origin, purpose, and destiny of all men. Hmmm. Kind of hard to swallow, isn’t it?