“In this world you will have trouble.” John 16:33
Believer, are you asking the reason for this? Look up to your heavenly Father, and see Him in all His purity and holiness. Do you know that you are to be like Him one day? Will you be conformed to His image easily? Won’t it require much refining in the furnace of affliction to purify you? Will it be an easy thing to get rid of your corruptions and make you perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect (Matthew 5:48)? Next, Christian, turn your eye downward. Do you know what enemies you have beneath your feet? You were once a servant of Satan, and no king will willingly lose his subjects. Do you think Satan will leave you alone? No, he will be always after you, because “he prowls around like a roaring lion, looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8 NLT). Therefore, Christian, expect trouble when you look below. Then look around yourself. Where are you? You are in an enemy’s country, as a stranger and a sojourner. The world is not your friend. If it is, you are not God’s friend—for the person who is a friend of the world is the enemy of God (James 4:4). Be assured that you will find adversaries everywhere. When you lie down to sleep, imagine that you are resting on a battlefield; when you walk, suspect an ambush behind every tree. As mosquitoes are said to bite strangers more than natives, so will the trials of earth be sharpest to you. Finally, look into your own heart and observe what is there: sin and self are still within. Even if you had no devil to tempt you, no enemies to fight you, and no world to trap you, you would still find in yourself enough evil to cause distress, since “the heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure” (Jeremiah 17:9). Expect trouble then, but don’t be depressed by it—God is with you to help and strengthen you. He has said He will be with us in trouble, to deliver and honor us (Psalm 91:15). - C.H. Spurgeon Morning and Evening
To be in trouble isn't difficult to achieve.
I often don't have to work at it to find myself there. I recently found myself in trouble for doing the right thing at work. The jury is still out on it but I was in trouble nonetheless.
I don't even need to be with people to be in trouble. Some of my worst times of being in trouble are when I am alone. My sin nature doesn't leave me alone. As Scripture says of the heart, it's desperately wicked who can understand it? Even we can't be trusted with ourselves.
It takes grabbing ahold of what Jesus promises in order to get through a day. The moment we think we are ok today with what we have planned...we are in trouble. Peter was in line to be decimated by Satan. That night that he denied that he knew Jesus was going to be a whole lot worse than what we read. Jesus knew what Satan wanted to do. As it was with Job, so it was with Peter. Satan was told how far he was allowed to go, not an inch farther. Jesus, facing separation from His Father, was praying for Peter. His concerns were of His Disciples and all who would come to Him after all this was completed.
We have a sin nature that will assuredly, if left unchecked, bring out the worst in us.
We cannot trust ourselves. Our zeal for Christ can get us into trouble. It did Peter. I can look back on my life and see how it got me in trouble.
Denial is perhaps one of Satan's greatest weapons. Denial of the value of human life is perhaps the greatest. Devalued, slavery still exists today. Devalued, babies are murdered in their mother's body. An animal or sea going creature has more rights to live than a human being.
Denial of the consequences of sin is a close second. He gets Christians to believe in grades of sin. That one isn't as bad as another. That it's ok if you do this as long as you don't do that. He gets Christians to look no different than the rest of the world and the result is people not seeing any reason to come to Christ.
He deceived Eve, then Adam. Two of the most perfect humans in all of history. We aren't even in their ballpark as far as intellectual ability. Christians today are being divided as well as the divide between believers and unbelievers. There's people calling themselves Christians who are so lukewarm that they and the world are one. It is they of whom it is written that Jesus tells to depart from Him for He never knew them. So much compromise has happened that they have dismissed what God called sin as sin.
When the Rapture takes place billions of people who have been so deceived will still be here when the dust settles.
This is why it is so crucial to be in prayer as Jesus was often in prayer. It's why so much is happening to attack the true Church for standing up for what God does say. It's why in the home father's are against sons, mother's against daughter's. Why the family unit is being mercilessly destroyed. To the point where children aren't safe to grow up with the gender that God gave them. Satan uses people to twist the thinking of children to get them to agree to mutilate their own bodies.
No there's no end to what Satan will want to try to do. There's limits on what he is allowed, but no limits on his desire to do what things only even HIS Creator can do.
Satan is a created being. He is nothing at all on the same level as God. At the cross he became a defeated being. So why all the delays in Christ returning?
You. Me. The people not born yet who would come to Christ who haven't been able to choose. Regardless of science fiction shows and movies. There actually is a finite gene pool. There's a God established limit to how many Humans will ever be born. Inside of that limit is every single person's reason for accepting or rejecting Christ as Savior.
The worst choosers will be during the Tribulation and the Thousand Year reign of Christ. Those that will live through a Thousand years of peace on earth and good will towards men yet at the end join willingly with Satan to try to attack Jesus Christ.
In our here and now we will face troubles. We will face problems. We who are indeed in Christ have Christ as our source of peace and rest in a world that only thinks it can provide that. We have a relationship with Jesus that they are missing. Those in the growing false Church aren't even aware that no such relationship exists. They are made to feel good when they gather, are not told of sin and it's consequences. Are not told of the wages of sin are death. Are not told to turn away from sexual immorality. Are not told anything that would save them.
In Christ we can and will be safe. The world will not understand. The Bible says they can't. The natural man does not understand the things of God they are foriegn to them.
We must be in prayer to get through what is today. Jesus kept teaching of being in today. It has enough trouble of its own. We cannot succeed in today without Christ going before us in battle. Psalm 23..He leads...
Pray for yourself to be who Jesus wants you to be today. Don't follow after others who take you away from that in your life.
Pray that you obey when the time comes to do so.
Pray for others to see through the lies, the deception of Satan before its too late.
Prayer is THE weapon Satan cannot fight against when we use it.
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