Why I believe more than ever in God...

Why I believe more than ever in God...

In Acts 14:22 Paul was "Confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith..."

  I quit looking to this world and the human race to fulfill my peace and livelihood along time ago. Being 74 years old has given me, along with others of long life, an understanding of what to believe in and it's not anything we can see. We've learned that anything you can see and touch can't be depended upon. It either gets old and dies or rusts and rots away. Even our bodies cannot be relied upon. We're healthy one day and the next our health can be gone. As for the human race, we are so unreliable. You can't trust me...Yes, me. I have made promise after promise in my day, but only to not be able to fulfill the promise. No one knows what tomorrow is going to bring, and when you promise something tomorrow...Well, you know what I mean. That's why God's Word in the Book of James says to speak of the future only in the terms, "the Lord willing." How many have learned that you can't trust your government for everything? Our leaders make promises going in that they never fulfill because it turned out to not be possible and there is not one President, Governor, Senator, Representative that has kept all their promises. They are human, not God. The best of intentions are thwarted by time or other limitations.

Listen to me. You and I are alive right now no matter what condition we are in because the Almighty God has kept us alive. You, like me, probably can look back and remember a time or two or more that we should have died but lived, and we know it was because of God keeping us alive. Now the young "whipper snappers" don't get it yet. Their day of looking back hopefully will come. But it was in the providence of the power of God working in our life. One other example...During WWII my uncle said that he ran many times through hails of machine gun bullets and never got a scratch, but others died. 

This coronavirus mess has revealed to me the debauchery of human leadership and the thirst for power over us, the common citizen. I've never seen nor heard more confusion as to how to handle a disease and any other detail about it you want to talk about. Then those in leadership in both parties, House, Senate, Presidential, former, current, potential Presidents and leadership from the President down, through state, county and city have created more confusion and harm than any good that I am sure they were wanting to accomplish instead of the confusion. I'm winded  and still confused just writing it.

We who have lived and will live through it know, therefore, to Whom to give the glory. "Continue in the faith," Paul wrote...Not in anything that man engineers, but in God whom we probably grieve while at times make to laugh in all of our lame efforts of establishing and continuing life on earth, because it is He who is the reason we survive such "Keystone Cop" handling of the order and stability of society in crisis. "Confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith..."

Let's get back to our respective churches and give thanks to the One and only One who deserves the recognition and glory for our daily survival. Amen? Do not trust the devices of man. Trust God and worship Him. We're open at Cove Baptist Church at 10:30 AM every Sunday.

Charles Empey is the Pastor of Cove Baptist Church, Orange, TX.