Corrie ten Boom wrote a book called The Hiding Place and it’s the true story of how she not only survived the brutal concentration camps of WW2, but how she saved the lives of countless persecuted Christians. In spite of her own devastating circumstances, she remained the light to the other women in the camps. Corrie and her family endured horrors and tortures that most of us could never fathom and yet, God was right there with her, working through her so that she could be a blessing to the other suffering people. Her story is truly a humbling experience.

 

Most of us will never go through what Corrie ten Boom did, and most of us will never know what it’s like to truly suffer for Christ. We live in a modern world that surrounds us with material possessions and congenial friends so that life is somewhat easy and comfortable. And then when trials do come, some of us complain because we have to endure an inconvenient setback or suffer through something that we were sure God should have exempted us from—after all, we are Christians. This attitude comes because we don’t read the Bible and we aren’t grateful to God for our lives. It comes because we listen to preachers who engage in false doctrines that appease our personal desires instead our need to follow Christ.

•  For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; 4And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.—2 Timothy 4:3-4

We can’t be fence sitting Christians anymore! We need to either dive deep into the Bible and study it diligently to know God and what His direction is for our lives, or we need to dive deep into the Bible and study it diligently to know God and what His direction is for our lives. In other words, if we’re going to say that we’re a Christian then we need to get serious and be one! We need to stop playing games and choose who we will serve!

• And if it seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.—Joshua 24:15

We can all look around us and see that the world is falling apart. The devil is busy destroying people and this world that God created, and he’s moving faster and harder now because his time is almost over; Jesus is about to return! We need to stop following false doctrines and showy preachers and get back to basics—back to the Bible!

Christianity is not about us! It’s not about what we can get from God, but rather, it’s about what God has already given to us. He gave His life as a ransom for our sins. He gave us freedom from sin, and freedom from the punishment of sin. He pardoned us from the wrath that is about to come upon this world and He gave us an eternal home in Heaven. We are not people of the world: we are the redeemed of Christ!

And we need to stop raising ourselves up and expecting life to come to us on a silver platter because it’s not going to happen. Trials and tribulations are going to come simply because we live in a world that’s corrupt and dying, and also because we know that we don’t belong here and so we preach about God and the world to come!

• These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.—John 16:33

What Jesus suffered on the cross should bring us all to our knees. We should all be humbled and amazed that God could and would do this for us. He left His throne in Heaven to come to earth and become one of us—a human! The Bible says in Psalm 8:5 and in Hebrews 2:7 that He became a little lower than the angels. He was God and yet He walked among us! How humbling is that! And yet, many Christians don’t fully understand what God did for them. When Adam and Eve sinned and brought a curse upon the whole of mankind, God could have just walked away and left us alone until we became an extinct species. And without God’s intervention throughout the years, sin truly would have killed us.

But God loved the world that He’d made and it was His desire that His children live in this paradise that He created. He set out to remove the sin that cursed His children and to defeat the devil that had set out to destroy the earth. And when we accept that Christ took our sins, we denounce sin and we accept Christ as our Lord and Savior. And then the old man in us dies and we are filled with the Spirit of God. Truly a humbling experience!

• Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.—Romans 6:6

We study the Bible and accept it as true because it IS true. And the more we study, the more God reveals His truth to us. The human mind can’t understand any of it and that’s why false preachers don’t teach the truth and that’s why followers who don’t know the truth will be deceived. But when we search and study the scriptures to know the truth, the Holy Spirit teaches us.

Jesus said in Matthew 5:14 that we are the light of the world. The world lives in darkness because it doesn’t know God. The wages of its sin is death—Romans 6:23, and so anyone or anything linked with sin is heading towards hell. There aren’t different levels of sin that qualify for different levels of punishment. The sacrifice of Christ covered all sin. We either have sin in us or we don’t. We either serve Satan or we serve God.

God gave Moses His laws in Exodus 20 so that the people would have a guideline to live by, and every person was responsible to fulfill those laws. And if any part of any one of these was broken even in the slightest way, then a sin was committed. God knew that this was an impossible task because of the devil’s influence, and so He had Moses build an Ark where He could live, be with the people and receive sacrifices that temporarily removed the sins from them so they could come before Him. These laws will never change because God doesn’t change. They are still in effect today and the consequences of breaking them remains the same.

The difference between then and now is grace! Jesus tells us in Matthew 5:17 that He didn’t come to change the law, but to fulfill the law! Jesus came to be the ultimate and final sacrifice that would bring God’s people back to Him. So now, anyone who accepts Jesus as Savior is saved from their sin and lives in grace—forgiveness. We are still obligated to obey the law, but we are no longer ruled by the law. We obey it with a willing heart.

Many of us don’t understand why some Christians spend their lives preaching and singing and living for God. And we won’t know until we truly give our lives to Christ. Only then can we know the love that God has for us and that because of this love, He saved us from our sins. Truly, we are humbled by His grace!

• That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.—Romans 10:9

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