Late Night Thoughts

The funny thing about me is that I think a lot when I am in bed about to sleep. Sometimes it is good, and at other times I wish I didn’t because I just want to get some rest. Tonight, I happened to be thinking about what I needed to do for this week’s assignments in my classes. Naturally, blogging popped into my mind as a close second to my math assignments. Thus, I started thinking about what I talked about last time on my blog. This happened to be of parallel thought with what I was doing before I hit the sack, which was reading the Bible. I was reading in Hebrews the last part of chapter eleven and beginning of twelve. Basically, the subject was the great cloud of witnesses, which are all those believers who came before the present (whether now or back when it was written) that demonstrated their faith even to the point of suffering. This made me think of how timid I really am when it comes to sharing Christ with others. Yeah, maybe I share over the internet pretty boldly, but, honestly, it is easy to talk about Christ when I am not sitting in front of anyone else. It is similar to Paul when he talked about being bold in letter, but not in person. Although, his situation was about correction, where mine is just being scared of what people might think or say. I mean, I always look for the moments where it is easy to bring up Christ to say something. The funny thing is there are almost never any easy moments. When I thought about that, the next thing that occurred to me was, “why would Satan make it easy for you Joe?” It is really easy to forget that this world is a war zone ranging from spiritual to physical. Though, I think it might just be spiritual because I think physical war is the result of spiritual war. Paul said we war not against flesh and blood, but against evil powers and principalities. Eventually, my thoughts brought me to the realization that each encounter is a battle. That is because everything in this world is at odds with Christ. I cannot expect to have it easy when it comes to sharing Christ, because the opposition hates when Christ’s Love is displayed. I mean, the truth is we wouldn’t have to ban certain subjects from being talked about if it were not for Christ. Because everything He represents goes against what the world says or rather what the world wants. The creed of the world is to do as one pleases, “It is okay to do whatever I want as long as I do not hurt anyone or get caught.” Where as the Lord says, “follow me and my ways, do as I command it will be well with you.” For a long time I thought those were just commands of whim. I thought, “Why are those ways better than what I want to do as long as no one is hurt?” However, I bought into a lie. I was blinded to all the hurt and calamity that already existed because of that way of thinking, and to increase the irony of it I even blamed God for all the suffering of the world. Answer me this skeptic that dwells in my mind, “If everyone does what they want in such a way that no one gets hurt, why does suffering abound?” Yeah, maybe some stuff just happens, but how much effect would that have if everyone lived for everyone else in the knowledge of eternal security. The power of charity is best shown in calamity, but what if society was like that all the time? Why does it take something like 9/11 or Katrina to band people together to help others? Thus, what I have found is that God commands us to live His way because it is the best way to live. It is the only way to live in peace with no suffering for eternity. Some ways may be good for awhile, in fact even centuries. However, there is a way that seems right to men, but in the end it only leads to death. I pray I love people enough to tell them that being separated from Christ leads to eternal destruction even knowing that they will hate me for doing so. I hope I have the strength to tell them Christ wants to be with them no matter who they are or what they have done. That everyone would be together forever.