Thoughts in Worship
Message Magazine's Online Devotional for Friday, December 9, 2016
Audio Link:
“So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.” (1 Corinthians 15:54).
Are you looking forward to the very timely demise of death? Are you looking forward to the day when death and all its evil counterparts like sin, sickness, disease, discouragement, dissent, and hopelessness are cast into the lake of fire to burn with unquenchable fury? I am.
One day soon, the Lord will manifest His as good as done promise to return to earth to take His people on an all expense paid 1,000-year vacation in the land beyond the sky; heaven. And once we have enjoyed ourselves to the fullest, Jesus will provide luxury transportation in the Holy City to our inheritance; the New Earth. Our king will then have manifested the keeping of His promise that the meek will inherit the earth. All that were promises for millennia will have become blessed reality. There will be no more death, dying, or pain! The former things will have finally passed away. Are you looking forward to that day?
There are a few noteworthy things that must happen before Jesus comes if we plan to experience the blessing of His appearing in peace: the gospel of the kingdom must be preached into all of the world, as a witness that Jesus is able to save all who keep faith in Him. We must be perfected in His love and follow Him wherever He leads. And at just the right time, when the trumpet of the Lord shall sound and His brightness bursts to view in the entire expanse of the heavens, those who fell asleep in death with a good relationship with God will be raised from the dead. Then those who never tasted of death, and share in the same faithful testimony, having washed their robes white in the blood of the Lamb, will be changed immediately! Will their characters be given that last bit of heavenly polish? No! For they will have already been perfected in character. What then? God Himself will give them new, eternal, disease-free bodies. He will give them bodies that can stand in the fullness of the presence of God with no darkening veil between. Amen! “Then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.” Are you looking forward to that day? Better yet; are you living forward to that day?—L. David Harris (www.davidwritesalot.com)