As the World Churns

Some of you will remember the old way of making butter. With cream in a jar you shake it vigor­ously for a period of time. It takes a while, but the churning will eventually turn the cream to butter.

Others of you have been on the ocean when the sea became turbulent. The churning of the waters gave you a very rough ride.

Well, the term also applies to the ongoing, noisy, boisterous upheaval here in America and in numerous other nations across the globe. We are living in a time when the chickens are coming home to roost.

Disorder, distrust, dysfunction and other like matters are no longer the exception; they are the rule. Hate and hostility, vengeance and violence, atheism and anarchy, vitriol, lies and thuggery are com­monplace. Death and destruction are now a societal pandemic.

Our planet makes a full revolu­tion on its axis once every twenty-four hours, but our society is spinning out of control every hour of the day. Walking down the street in broad daylight is no longer safe. Children playing in their own yards are at risk. Businesses are subjected to shoplifting, holdups and the smash-and-grab mobs.

In a word, you could say our world is on fire. The problem is it is the wrong fire. Left to them­selves, the people in our world will spin out, their lives will end and they will live forever in the fiery domain of an eternal Hell (Luke 16:19–31).

The perpetrators of this world’s churning—the atheist, the humanist, the secularist, the evolutionist, the God-denier, the Christ-rejecter, the Bible hater—are all in this world’s fire; but they are headed for the bottomless pit of that eternal Hellfire.

Another Fire Is Missing

When Jeremiah said, “His word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones“ (Jer. 20:9), he disclosed that he had some­thing that we all need. When the excitement of being saved ebbs away, it is a sad indicator that your fire is not burning brightly. When a church drags through service after service with empty altars, dry baptistries and no new babes in Christ, someone needs to re­kindle the fire.

As a preacher matures, he needs to be careful to keep that spiritual fire burning in his soul. When he takes to the pulpit and opens his mouth to preach, it ought to be evident that the Holy Spirit is creating a combustion in him.

When the fire goes out in the preacher and the folks at the church, the darkness will overtake the area. Fire provides light and dispels the darkness.

You and I have a Saviour. We are saved. We have been forgiven and we are in the family of God. We are Heaven bound. We can be filled (anointed) with the Holy Spirit. We have the pure Word of God and the Gospel that is available for everybody. Oh, dear friend, pile all of that up like cord­wood, light it up with the unction of the Lord and let your fire burn.

Our churning world cannot help itself. It is on a collision course from which it cannot extricate itself. There is only one way of escape for them. You and I have the answer, the only solution, for them.

“For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.”—Rom. 1:16.

“For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;

“And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.”—I Cor. 15:3,4.

That’s it! Let’s get with it and get the job done that our Lord gave us to do.