God: "I looked for someone to take a stand for me, and stand in the gap" (Ezekiel 22:30)
What is the worst the opposition can do? Kill you – though doubtless that will occur, at least for now, in this country. But even if that were case, the Scripture strips away that excuse citing that death for the Christian is the greatest event possible because only death has the ability to break the seal and usher you into inexpressible glory. Could the problem be that we simply have a too great a fascination with the things going on here and not enough desire to spend eternity with Christ? If we really “prefer” to be “home with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8), intimate, personal, visible communion with Christ that far exceeds our communion with Christ here (Heb. 11:10, 13), then we must be “absent from the body” (2 Cor. 5:8). In other words, we must die. Therefore death from that perspective doesn’t sound so bad. Only death can release me from “absent from the Lord” to be “home with the Lord.” So the worst the enemy can do is send me to paradise!
Even when preaching the Word of God does not soften and save and heal, it is not necessarily ineffective. This preaching of the Word may be doing God’s terrible work of judgment. It may be hardening people, and making their ears so dull that they will never want to hear again. There is a judgment in this world – not just in the world to come (Romans 1:24) – and oh, how we should flee from it…. Take heed how you hear! Don’t be cavalier in the hearing of God's Word week after week. If it is not softening and saving and healing and bearing fruit, it is probably hardening and blinding and dulling (see 2 Corinthians 2:16).
