Written by Carolyn Arends, a contemporary speaker, author, and songwriter. This is an excerpt from her book “Theology in Aisle Seven.”
We are in the thrashing time, a season characterized by our pervasive capacity to do violence to each other and ourselves. The temptation is to despair. We have to remember, though, that it won’t last forever. Jesus has already crushed the serpent’s head. Recently I heard a message from theologian Gary Deddo … [who] challenges the tendency many of us have to be dualists — imagining God and Satan as equal foes deadlocked in mortal combat. To be certain, Deddo acknowledges, there is an immeasurable amount of evil in our world. But compared with God’s love and power, all the evil in the universe doesn’t cover the head of a pin. Love wins. Satan doesn’t stand a chance. Thus, though we wrestle with the brokenness that plagues the world, and ourselves, we do so not with grim resignation but with hopeful defiance. We face both our addictions and afflictions not with a faint, white-knuckled hope that someday we will be healed, but rather with an assurance that we are living slowly but surely into the healing already obtained on the Cross. There is still a waiting. In some cases, the healing may not come in fullness until we are face-to-face with our Victor — but come it will. Guaranteed.
Prayer:
Written by David Platt, a contemporary pastor and author.
Oh, God. Lord Jesus, we trust in you. We trust that you are working all things. Even the things we don’t understand going on in the world around, even the things we don’t understand in our lives. God we praise you for the confidence that when we lift up our eyes from what we see right around us and we look ahead, we know the day is coming when the kingdom of the world will become the kingdom of our Lord and His Christ. And he shall reign forever and ever.
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