Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
[It was on Monday, August 29, 2005, that Hurricane Katrina made its second and third (final) landfalls in Louisiana and on the Louisiana/Mississippi border. You can find a timeline on WikipediA.]
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How shall we live in our post-Katrina world? We should live "in the fear of God" even if there had been no Katrina. But to common people worldwide the message is clear: "Seek the Lord while He may be found, call upon Him while He is near" (Isa. 55:6). The Lord is not always going to be "near" as He is now!
Geoscientists cannot explain the flood of Noah except that "the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth" (Gen. 6:5). Only one man was "righteous," and God spared him so he could "become heir of the righteousness which is according to faith" (Heb. 11:7). Common sense would convince us that we too should so live in a sinful world as the heirs of righteousness by faith!
This is not to "judge" New Orleans in the least; "judge not, that you be not judged" (Matt. 7:1) is the law of Jesus. The sins of others would be our sins (and are ours!) but for the grace of a Savior who took upon His sinless nature our sinful nature that He might in all things suffer temptation as we suffer it, yet lived "without sin" (Heb. 4:15). He was not merely an impossible-to-equal Example, but He is a Savior from sin. Watch the graphic pictures on TV of the total devastation, and then consider your house you live in--"there but for the grace of God go I."
In that light, our only possible conclusion: "the love [agape] of Christ constraineth us ... and ... they which live should not [yes, cannot!] henceforth live unto [ourselves], but unto Him which died for [us], and rose again" (2 Cor. 5:14, 15, KJV). Let the world (or even the church?) judge us as being fanatical; but how can we "judge" otherwise?
And the "fear of God" we sense is not selfish terror, but a heart-melting sense of the "fear" in Psalm 130: "Out of the depths I have cried to You, O Lord; ... If You, Lord should mark iniquities, O lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with You, that You may be feared" (vss. 1-4). The "fear" in the first angel's message of Revelation 14:6, 7 is thanks for forgiveness!
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: September 8, 2005.
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