Particular Grace
The official blog of Grace Covenant Church
Because we are recipients of the grace of God, we are therefore able to endure these temporary pains and sufferings that we face until we die and enter into glory. The Apostle Paul helped his readers—real people like us with real problems like us—to set their minds on the things above and this everlasting life.
Consider first, Romans 8:18-25— “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us…
Right now, most of the world is paralyzed as we all remain hunkered down in our homes waiting for this coronavirus plague to loosen its grip. Thus, waiting is a very relevant topic.
When the Bible speaks of waiting, it’s an entirely different thing than what we do after we take a number at the motor vehicle department. Biblical waiting is not a passive activity, but is demonstrated by active dependence upon and obedience to God. Thus, waiting upon God is a spiritual discipline that we should seek to practice in our lives. Here are nine ways we can practice biblical waiting.
No one would deny that these are strange days in which we’re currently living. We’ve all been forced to adapt our daily lives to this new reality. Sadly, this even includes changing the way the church conducts its ministry. I have been encouraged by those members of our church who have been struggling over the loss of corporate worship. Some have reached out to inform me that they find the loss of Sunday worship downright agonizing. This is a reflection of grace in their hearts. Pity the person who can have public worship taken away without ever missing it. I would rather go to bed without dinner than go a Sunday without church!
Truly our hearts resonate with words of the psalmist in Psalm 84—
“How lovely is your dwelling place, O LORD of hosts! My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the LORD . . . Blessed are those who dwell in your house, ever singing your praise! Selah. For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere.”
In 1970 Joni Mitchell released the song, “Big Yellow Taxi.” In that song she sang a familiar refrain that we can probably all agree with: “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone?”
As God’s people, we find the current suspension of our church services to be extremely distressing. We’ve lost something, haven’t we? And we at Grace Covenant Church find ourselves in the same painful providence as many other faithful churches across the world. We are all feeling the excruciating thirst that results from the loss of corporate worship.
As I write this, over 1,000 people in the U.S. have now died from COVID-19, or the coronavirus. This is sobering news. We must not take this lightly, for this is indeed a very serious disaster that has already claimed the lives of thousands worldwide and authorities say the worst is still to come.
In light of this ominous and unseen threat that hangs over our world like a large, dark cloud, I want to offer you some encouragement from God’s Word. While we are wise to take this virus seriously, we as Christians must not give in to fear, “for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control” (2 Tim. 1:7).
Here are some important truths to keep in mind as we anticipate the impending trouble before us:
