Devotional: May 2 - Saved better than removed
How many of us have entered into trials from God in which we have come to need a way out, and we have come to cry out: Take me Lord. Let me tell you that no matter how hard the road is, the Lord has not yet finished with you, for you a long way is prepared, but great victories.
I share these words of the prince of preachers.
"I do not pray that you take them out of the world but that you keep them from evil." John 17:15. @
This is a pleasant and blessed event that all believers will experience in due time: go to be with Jesus. In a few more years the soldiers of the Lord, who now fight the good Battle of faith, you will have ended the conflict and you will enter into the joy of your Lord. But although Christ asks that his people be at last with him, where he is, does not ask, however, to be taken straight from the world to heaven. On the contrary, you want it to remain here. But how often does the tired pilgrim raises this prayer !: "Who would give me wings like a dove! I would fly, and He would rest.
"But Christ does not pray like that, he leaves us in the hands of his Father until, like the mature grain, we gather in the barn of our Teacher. Jesus does not pray for our prompt departure for death, because to remain in the flesh, if it is not profitable for ourselves, is necessary for others. He asks us to be saved from evil, but never asks us to be admitted into the inheritance of glory, until we reach old age.
Christians, when They have some proof, they usually want to die. Ask them why, and they will say: "Because
we would like to be with the Lord. "We fear that it is not so much the desire to be with the Lord. how much to be free of the test; otherwise, they would feel the same desire in times of bonanza. They want to go to the heavenly home, not so much to be with the Lord as to rest.
Is very just the desire to leave, if we can do it in the same spirit that Paul did, because with Christ it is much better; but the desire to flee from affliction is selfishness. What our concern and desire is rather to glorify God in our lives, in this world, until he it pleases him, even when it is in the midst of hardships, conflicts and sufferings; and let's leave in their hands the time of our departure.
C.H. Spurgeon