A Bleak Surrounding

Our country is headed for a recession. Only 4% of Americans have a Biblical worldview. Drug use is becoming rampant among junior high students. The majority of high school students do not graduate with their virginity still intact.

We are living in a very bleak surrounding.

If you turn on your television, you will see reports on the news of absolutely horrible things that are happening to people every day. You will see murder, cheating, lying, and a world with no hope. We may be great at keeping our world “green” but we sure aren’t keeping it moral.

I do not watch hardly any television or read any of the popular books because they are so filled with evil. Lying has become okay, and truth has become relative. Christianity has become scarcer and Agnosticism and Atheism is growing.

If you are not a Christian, I don’t know how you can keep on living. Obviously the
world is not what it should be, and it will come to an end someday. If the world keeps getting steadily more evil, what is the point in prolonging your distress? Wouldn’t it be easier to just give up hope and die?

I have good news and bad news. This world will come to an end. It will get worse and evil will appear to prevail. This is not the bad news, however, because Jesus is coming back to take his followers to a new earth that is emptied of evil and is perfect because God made it! Revelation 21:1 says, “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and there was no longer any sea.” Can you imagine what it will be like to go to a completely new world?! This is the good news: If you believe and follow Jesus Christ, you will go to the new earth and live with Him forever. The bad news is this: if you do not believe, you will go to hell and will suffer eternal separation from God.

This is the bleak surrounding. As humans, we can handle turmoil in our lives, a bad economy, and poverty. But we cannot handle complete separation from God. It is God’s will for all people to love and obey Him, but because we are idiots, we reject God’s will and try to make one of our own. The separation of heaven and hell is great, and there is no way to do over your life once in hell. Do you really want to die not believing in God and then stand before Him on judgment day knowing that you have rejected Him all your life? How terrible it will be for those who did not believe and finally see that they were the ones who were wrong. Can you imagine what the screaming will be like when their fate is announced?

In a world that is falling apart, it seems as if there is no hope. Yet in a world where evil is rampant, there is a shaft of light piercing the darkness of Satan. This light comes from the only one who emanates absolute truth, agape love, and amazing grace. This light is our Redeemer, Savior, and Everlasting Hope. In a world with no love, no truth, and no trust, God shines his glory to those willing to accept it. I plead with each and every one of you to receive the truth before it is too late. Do not let the bleak outlook of the world envelop your senses. Do not let Satan win the battle over your life now, for Jesus will prevail in the end.

An Eternal Holiday

Did you have a good Easter? Was your day filled with presents and candy? Or was it spent worshiping God’s Son who died for your sins?

It amazes me how the world can simply remove the true meaning of Easter from the world and convince so many people that it is about the Easter Bunny or egg-dyeing or candy. How many people do you think woke up this morning with a stomach ache from all the candy and food? How many people didn’t enjoy their day just because they knew it would be over too soon?

All the world gets after Easter is a stomach ache and a bummed spirit.

But there is good news, too. If you are a Christian, you know that we celebrate Easter for a much more wonderful reason. We are celebrating the resurrection of Christ who takes away the sin of the world! Without this monumental occasion, there would be no eternal importance to Easter, Christmas, or Good Friday. The world misses out on an extremely important part of one of the most important holidays!

Can you imagine celebrating Easter only for the food, candy, and gifts? Can you imagine never knowing what Christ did for the world and how we can enter eternity in heaven through it? Can you imagine that kind of spiritual darkness?

I have been raised in a Christian setting my entire life, so I don’t know what these things truly feel like, though I believe it would be truly horrible. God has made it our mission to make sure no one has to live in that type of ignorance! I think it is crazy how people say that Christians are the ignorant ones… Aren’t we the ones that truly understand what life’s importance is?

What did you do to spread the message of Easter? Did you invite someone over to your house to share the marvel of Christ’s resurrection? Plan ahead next year if you didn’t, so that you may share the joyous news of the empty tomb!

It saddens me to walk into Wal-Mart, Target, or just about any store and see only chocolate bunnies, sugar coated peeps, and creamy eggs. What about the cross? What about the true meaning? Why can’t the world see that not every holiday is just about the material things?

It is up to us as Christians to expose the true meaning of Easter to the world. There will be many who will refuse to see it, but many hearts will be touched by the message they have never heard. We all must try harder than ever to expose the world’s temporary pleasures and instead reveal the everlasting meaning of Christ.

“He himself bore our sins, in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed!” 1 Peter 2:24