What are we waiting for?

DEVOTION

 THE GOSPEL OF JOHN

WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR?

John 16:1-4

16:1 "All this I have told you so that you will not go astray. 2 They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact, a time is coming when anyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God. 3 They will do such things because they have not known the Father or me. 4 I have told you this, so that when the time comes you will remember that I warned you. I did not tell you this at first because I was with you.

NIV

Someone is trying to kill us. Certainly we could see these words of Jesus as spoken directly and solely to his disciples and in fact most of them were killed for their faith, but these words still apply to us. Throughout the world there are people who would kill us and think they are doing a service to God. Those who subscribe to Islam believe us Christians are infidels and truly believe if we do not believe as they do, we should be killed. Yet even in this country if we could ask Rachel Scott, the girl killed at Columbine high school, why she was killed, it would be because of her faith. Yet for the most part at least in this country we live a rather safe and secure life as a Christian so it would seem these words do not have much application in our lives. Yet there is a movement within this country, perhaps not to kill us physically, but to kill the idea of God, to kill us spiritually. There is a movement that would put to end the Christian beliefs of sharing the Gospel message. They want any reference of God removed from the public square. They want their equal rights, their human rights above those of God. Perhaps we feel safe and secure because for the most part those of the world are not threatened by us. Perhaps if we were to tell them they are going to hell, if they do not accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, that they need to be born again, they would indeed wish us to be killed. They would not actually kill us, but certainly might wish we would just disappear. So we just tell them that God loves them, see how he loves you, see how I love you, see all the things I do for you to show how much God loves you. So they let us work our fingers to the bone for them, use us and laugh behind our backs. But if we told them they need to repent of their sin, and if they don’t they have condemned themselves to hell, they would hate us, rebuke us, refuse to have anything to do with us, in effect we would be dead to them. They would listen not to our words or ideas; they would close their minds to anything we would have to say after proclaiming the truth to them. So instead we pander to them hoping by loving them somehow by osmosis they will know the truth. The disciples were killed because they stood up, spoke up, telling the truth about Jesus Christ and called people to repent, turn from their wicked ways and believe in Jesus. So what are we waiting for? Are we afraid what will happen? Are we afraid of losing our Job? Are we afraid of losing a so called friend? Are we afraid of what people will say about us? Sticks and stones can hurt my bones but words can never hurt me. What are we waiting for? Jesus warned the church about being luke warm, he would rather us be cold or hot, but luke warm will be spit out of his mouth. What are we waiting for?