Articles
God's Law For Us All
Headlines abound this morning, over 70 people shot this weekend in Chicago, a city with the most stringent of gun control and gun regulation laws, not to mention laws against domestic violence, gang membership, murder, drug trafficking etc.
I'm praying for this ongoing insanity, and I pray you will also. Ultimately we know that there is one cure for all of this, but unless people chose to follow God's commands, there will be no large-scale improvement.
People are going to do what people want to do, laws or not. We know this in our society and we know it from our Bibles where we have thousands of years of history of people choosing to ignore God's laws and even the laws of the land, both of which were written for their protection and benefit, both physically and spiritually. We have recorded history of what their evil behavior earned them, and in many instances, it was severe punishment or even death.
Evil people live in "darkness", they are "divisive", and we are told to "have nothing to do with them" for our own good. (Eph 5:11, Titus 3:10) In times of old, God destroyed entire nations due to their evil actions, and at one time, killed everybody on the face of the earth except 8 righteous souls because "The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time." (Gen 6:5)
People can reject God so intently that "God [gives] them over to a depraved mind so that they do what ought not to be done. They [have] become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed, and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them." (Rom 1:28-32)
It's hard to believe people spend time "inventing ways to do evil" (Rom 1:30), but God says they do. I'm confident the above passage describes many who are responsible for the bloodbath in Chicago this weekend, but evil people are certainly not limited to that city nor is evil limited to violence.
God would have us to obey His rule, subject ourselves to His commands, and surrender our lives to live by His ordinances. While we exist in a world captivated by their own insanity, may we pray diligently for them, for the salvation of their souls and for changes in their behavior. In the same moment, may we pray for protection from such evil physically and spiritually, so that we may live Godly lives before Him. Let us never forget that He is the potter and we are the clay and that He uses us in different capacities for His eternal purpose. (Rom 9:21)
