Stop the Pain
And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. THERE SHALL BE NO MORE PAIN, for the former things have passed away.” – Revelation 21:3-4 NKJV.
When wisdom enters your heart,
And knowledge is pleasant to your soul,
Discretion will preserve you;
Understanding will keep you,
To deliver you from the way of evil. – Proverbs 2:10-12a NKJV.
But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. – James 3:17 NKJV.
There has been such pain across our world in recent days with the horrific Easter bombing of churches and hotels in Sri Lanka. Hundreds of Christians peacefully worshiping their Lord ripped from this world to the next. However, the pain inflicted by those led by hatred instead of peace was not limited to just Sri Lanka. How many were killed by hate filled people in just the last week? Likely the number, if known, would be in the thousands. Just in the area where I live there have been three brutal murders that has caused great pain for their families. One of those killed I knew, as he attended the same high school that I attended.
For us who know Jesus as our Savior we have the glorious promise that is given in Revelation 21 that someday “…there shall be no more pain!” But certainly, it is not God’s will that there be pain in our lives even now. How can the pain be stopped? How can people be turned from their evil ways? Revelation gives us the answer to that: “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God.” Did you get that? “…the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them.” For those who know Jesus as their Savior, God is already dwelling with them as we are told in 1 Corinthians 3:16, “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” Once “the Spirit of God dwells in you,” He is a force restraining you from causing evil and pain.
The writer of the Book of Proverbs tells us that we need wisdom. Wisdom will “deliver you from the way of evil.” How do we obtain this kind of wisdom? “Wisdom that …is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.” In James 1:5 we are told, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him.”
There is a solution available to the pain and evil that is running rampant across our world. What is that solution? His Name is JESUS! Give them JESUS and stop the pain!