The Quest For Truth

If anyone thinks that the Christian life is a life free from pain they are terribly mistaken. It is a life with as much, if not more, pain as any other normal life without Christ. What marks the contrast is the way we handle pain as Christians. When Christ is with us, pain takes on another meaning. For now we overcome through pain. We return good for evil and love for hate in and through the pain. We learn not to retaliate and we  endure pain as a good soldier of Christ. So, we never give in to despair. Our situation never becomes hopeless even though the pain may be great. In all things we overcome because we have learned to handle pain.

Proverbs 16:6 says that by the fear of the Lord men depart from evil. After we experience the grace of God and overcome sin in our lives, we are warned not to take the grace of God lightly. Because now we are ones who have tasted the goodness of the Lord and experienced the resurrection life of our Lord. We are now mature believers in the Lord understanding the goodness of the Lord. If after experiencing all these, we return to a life of sin, then our plight is indeed miserable. Because the Bible says that it would have been better if we had never known the Lord. This is where the fear of the Lord comes. We have to fear the Lord as fear in a real sense because it is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the Living God. By the fear of the Lord, Joseph ran from Potiphar’s wife when she tempted him to commit adultery with her. We fear God because we know the goodness and the severity of the Lord. To those who have been given much, much is expected from them. Similarly we have to fear the Lord and depart from evil lest the day comes when we find no place for repentance. The Lord is merciful and gracious but let us not take His grace lightly.