I teach the high school Sunday school class at my church. For the past few months we’ve been going through the book of Revelation. A task that was pretty intimidating for me as a leader…since the book itself isn’t exactly a summer beach read. My co-leader, Ben, just finished our last lesson yesterday. A few weeks back, though, I taught a lesson on Chapters 15 and 16. I hadn’t known exactly what to say, or what portion of the text to focus on. But as I studied the words the Holy Spirit took hold of my heart and showed me what to zero in on: Responding to bad times.
If you ask me there is no book of the Bible that describes worse days than Revelation. As my Dad would say, “Sounds like a bad day at the office.”
There are plagues and beasts and wars all over the place. If you haven’t read it in a while, I’ll refresh you. After a short bit the believers are taken away from the Earth, leaving those who have not put their faith in Jesus. Time goes on and things really take a turn. Angels line up with bowls of wrath…ready to be dumped on the world. Yeah, not a good day at the office.
So the wrath starts coming. Boils break out on the skin, salt water turns to blood, fresh water turns to blood, the sun’s heat is unmasked from the Earth making things hot and dangerous.
From the text it seems obvious what is happening. God is working. He is making known His greatness. He is bringing the justice He has long promised. In my mind, the natural thing to do would be submit under the wrath. Acknowledge the Lord and repent. If I didn’t believe in God…you bet your burnt buns that’d get my attention.
But that is not the reaction we see in Revelation. Chapter 16 tells us that the people blaspheme His name. They refuse to repent. Others curse the name of the Lord.
I can just imagine the world…going to hell in a hand basket years from now. Technology that we’ve never dreamed of is in the works, science has come leaps and bounds. And between the two…science and technology, the people of the Earth can explain away everything that is happening. They can blame the water on red algae, the heat on weather patterns. They take these awful hardships with an even stonier heart.
As much as I wish this was true, being a Christian does not mean your life will be sheltered from trouble. There is no easy fix for hardship. Difficult, draining, even tragic moments will crop up in this life and there is nothing we can do to stop all of them from happening. What we can do is control our view of trying times. We can allow tragedy to turn our attention back toward the Lord. Let it soften our hearts. We can trust that evil, awful thing that happen in this life are not always created by God…but they can always be used to glorify Him.
At then end of a day full of hardships we have a few choices to make. The first is whether we choose to grip on tight to the trouble, own it and make it our own…or whether we will turn the hardship over to God with open hands. Knowing that He can spin even the darkest of moments into an opportunity to show His glory.
The second choice kind of wraps its tendrils around the first. We chose how to respond. With anger, lack of faith, and curses toward God, like the folks in Rev. 16…or with a grateful heart and a submissive spirit, allowing even natural disasters to cause us to wonder at the hands of God. If we believe the latter, we can take heart, knowing that we serve a God who is just and merciful to those who love Him. Because at the end of it all, at the end of Revelation, the plagues, the beasts, the hardships…they all had to happen to bring about a greater end: a restored world where nothing will ever separate those who love God from Him again. An Earth where we dwell together with our Savior and hardships no longer exist.
Amy
