DO NOT BE DEVASTATED!

CHRISTIANS CAN’T BE…

SINNERS DON’T HAVE TO REMAIN SO…

 

TO THE CHURCH:
This “JOY STORY” will help remind you of the work God has done in you and the power God has given you.

Isaiah 26:3
You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you.

 

TO THOSE OUTSIDE GOD’S COVENANT:
you don’t have to be devastated, depressed or defeated if you seek Him while He can be found!

Isaiah 55:6-7
Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake their ways and the unrighteous their thoughts. Let them turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.

 

YOUR SPIRIT IS YOU and you are perfect when you are seated with Christ in the heavenly realms… if you are in Christ.

 

Ephesians 2:1-10
As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.  All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.  But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy,  made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.  And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus,  in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.  For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.  For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

 

Selah.

Therefore, you have no need to be devastated for devastation, my Church, is something or someone brought to ruin. A devastated person is one who is overwhelmed by grief and not overjoyed by the Lord God Almighty. A person who lives in devastation is a person who is helpless! And helpless is the man who does not call on God to rescue him from the pit; the pit of damnation that will come outside covenant with God, the pit of hopeless and despair because this one can’t do anything good and beautiful on his own!

 

CHRISTIANS: this cannot be you!

DON’T BE DEVASTATED!

Certainly we are attacked by the enemy of our souls and his demonic forces, attacked by people who hate us without cause just as they hated Christ because He is good. As Jesus spoke to His disciples He also speaks to us for we are Christ’s ambassadors, we are His people and we must always continue to learn from Him more:

 

John 15:18-19
“If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.

 

2 Corinthians 5:17-21
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation:  that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.  We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

 

Recently a religious man told me of a devastating attack. That attack was the death of a beloved family member. Of course, he knew it would come; but this is how he spoke of death… devastating. This is not how God views it however. And death, our final enemy, will come (unless you are raptured) to all and we know it, have known it for many, many years. And death, my friends, is merely a temporal separation of the body and soul from the spirit man. Psalm 23 tells us in verse 4:

 

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil; For You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

 

And Psalm 116 explodes with joy at the joining with God and His saints upon physical death…

 

Psalm 116:15
Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his faithful servants.

 

DON’T THINK I am taking physical death lightly. I am not because God does not. It is our final enemy:

 

1 Corinthians 15:26
The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

 

Rejoice! And be exceedingly glad! Death is not the end and you will have to die… Face it as a saint! Don’t take it like a man, a man of the world; take it as a child of God with greatest expectations of seeing your God face to face and living with Him and all your eternal family eternally!

satan has been defeated. He has been cast out of residing in Heaven. Jesus took the keys of death and Hades BACK!

 

Revelation 1:18
I am the Living One; I was dead, and now look, I am alive for ever and ever! And I hold the keys of death and Hades.

 

DEATH IS NOT THE ONLY attack brought on by The Fall of Adam; it’s just one of the greatest reminders… a reminder we need God at the end of our lives and when we are wise, we confess with our tongue and believe in our hearts, we need God to breathe!

Death is real. It comes to most; but don’t forget The Rapture is coming (and if you don’t like that word – read First Thessalonians, chapter four, where the Lord, Himself, will come down from Heaven commanding His own to rise: where the dead in Christ rise first and those who haven’t physically died will be caught up together with them in the clouds and meet the Lord in the air!) Rapture!

Selah.

satan wants every man to feel and be devastated when he attempts as always to steal, slaughter and destroy. We don’t have to let him! Live in peace! Die in peace! And fight the good fight – in peace! Study our beautiful biblical heroes (because we know these stories are truly real) and emulate them. You can do it!

 

2 Timothy 4:1-8
In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge:  Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction.  For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.  But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry. For I am already being poured out like a drink offering, and the time for my departure is near. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day—and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing.

 

God Almighty has dealt satan and his demonic force a legal, lethal blow!
Don’t blow it!
DON’T BE DEVASTATED!

 

AS FOUND IN MY FIRST BOOK, Joy Stories, page seven under the story: “You know Father…”  is one of my famous “Joy Jots”  – I repeat it now:

FOCUS:
Fully
On
Christ’s
Unsurpassing
Salvation!

 

1 Timothy 2:5
For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus,

 

2 Timothy 2:8-9
Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David. This is my gospel,  for which I am suffering even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But God’s word is not chained.

 

1 Thessalonians 5:23
May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

Hebrews 1:3
The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.