THE DARKER THE NIGHT, THE BRIGHTER THE LIGHT!
Lots and lots of trees fill the landscape where I live. They grow everywhere and are simply majestic! Their canopies form a luxuriant front of green foliage against the sky. As their branches blend together, it's difficult to isolate the form of one tree from another. That is, until fall.
Shorter hours of sunlight and longer nights of darkness begin a profound change in their appearance. One tree in particular responds to the alteration in the season by displaying slight hints of color on her leaves. As fall progresses, she answers to lengthening darkness by adorning herself with brilliant red long before the other trees around her seem to know winter is coming. By October she stands out among her fellows like a queen!
There she stands, brilliantly, courageously being beautifully different against a backdrop of green! Adorned in her crimson dress, she reflects the glory of God's creative genius for the world to see and drink in!
She is so like what true believers are and must be in the world as it slips below the horizon of truth into total darkness. Resplendent in God's glory, the believer, the Church, must stand as a declaration of God's eminence and lasting dominion over the world and all in it.
No rejection can alter God's power. No sin, however heinous, can sully God's purity. No rebellion against truth can edit His everlasting Word. God is still on the throne! Listen to this verse and delightful scripting of God's purpose:
Little do the crowds of this world understand or realize that their actions, however evil and rebellious, are unfolding God's purpose He fore planned and foreknew. Jonathan Cahn's books bear out this truth so clearly. God long ago prophesied world events that are coming to pass, and the world is now acting out the final scenes of His script. Yet, they do it of their own volition, not by coercion or preordination by God. They are puppets of the devil carrying out his devious plots whether they admit to their being used by him or not.
At the same time, those of us who confess Jesus with our lips and live out His life through the power of His Holy Spirit can encounter no calamity that does not fit God's purpose, also:
We are called to His purpose. The world is not. Recklessly, furtively, boldly, rebelliously it denies God and His holy word...all testified to happening in the Last Days by God through the Old Testament prophets and New Testament apostles.
For such a time as this that God calls "today," His people are called to stand out as shining lights against the backdrop of darkness called "the world." Just like the brilliant tree that shimmers red, His Spirit causes us to be brilliantly victorious amid the cacophony of the world's clamor against the God we love when we saturate ourselves in His word and prayer and stand in His might!
In the end, God calls us overcomers. We overcome the devil and his schemes against God and His own by our testimony of Jesus and the blood of the Lamb! His name is all-victorious! Shine in all His glory, Church!
Bear faithful witness to God's eternal authority and glory! The power and privilege to do so is your PURPOSE! Represent Him well.