Skip to main content

You Really Don't Want To Be There


Where?

Maybe it’s the dentist’s chair or the Emergency Room or the Principal’s office.  You may not want to be there!

Or maybe it’s the places we tend to avoid, the places where illicit or illegal activities take place. You probably just don’t want to be there!

There are two places you actually really don’t want to be.  One is hiding from and the other is away from.

Adam and Eve walked with God in the garden.  Then they sinned.  They became afraid and ashamed and hid from God (Gen 3:8).  Hiding from God is almost always a result of sin and the accompanying feelings of fear or guilt or shame.  You really don’t want to be there!

Cain and Abel were Adam and Eve’s sons.  Cain was jealous of Abel and killed him.   After Cain killed his brother, the Lord detailed Cain’s punishment.  Then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord (Gen 4:16).  Going away from the presence of God is almost always a result of sin and the accompanying feelings of fear or guilt or shame.  You really don’t want to be there!

When we believe in and receive His son, we have access to His presence.  He also takes away our sin and deals with our feelings of fear or guilt or shame.  We then no longer have to hide from God and we no longer have to be away from His presence.

In fact, we are, as His children, forever in His presence and His presence is forever with us.  That’s where you really want to be!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Excel Still More!

To excel, according to some of the meanings from a few dictionaries, is to surpass others, do extremely well, outdo, do something better than anyone else. In 1 Thessalonians 4:1, we find the phrase “excel still more”.   It prompts the question:  if we are already doing something better than anyone else, why would we be encouraged to do even more? Perhaps it would be helpful to see the wording that other translations use for “excel still more” to see why we would be encouraged to do so.  Here is a sampling: • abound more and more • to keep doing so more and more • but try even harder • live that way more and more. • that you progress even more. • that you increase more and more in how you ought to walk Maybe it would also be helpful to see some other verses where the word “excel” is used: “Now in Joppa there was a disciple named Tabitha (which when translated means Dorcas); this woman was excelling in acts of kindness and charity which she did habitually.”...
Post a Comment
Read more

Value Proposition

Value proposition:  it’s a marketing statement that summarizes why a consumer should buy a product or use a service.  It should clearly and concisely communicate what customers can gain from selecting a particular brand over that of its competitors. In a value proposition, you don’t want your product to be viewed as being worth less than what your competitors offer.   But even worse, in a bit of a quirk of how letters and spaces can fall, if you take out the space between “worth” and “less”, you get “worthless”, which means something of no value.   If that word is used in conjunction with how your product is viewed by customers, it’s a word that will likely kill your brand. In the book of Philippians, the Apostle Paul, in a sense, communicated some value propositions. In chapter three, he starts off with describing the value of some things that many considered as extremely valuable in that day and age.   They had to do with status and achievement in the reli...
Post a Comment
Read more

Outrun the What?

“Outrun the rays”!  It’s a phrase I noticed on a billboard.  I think it’s a public service type campaign.  The intent, I assume, is to get people out of the harmful rays of the sun that can cause things like skin cancer.  But you really can’t outrun the rays, they travel at about 186,282 miles per second! Yet the campaign has a certain appeal to it.   “Outrun” sounds a lot like a competition and maybe it gets the competitive juices going for some.   Yet, try as you may, you still can’t outrun the rays, but you can implement strategies to avoid them.   And most of those strategies have a simple foundational aspect to them; you avoid the rays by finding some type of covering. Strategies for covering up from the rays include being in shaded areas, putting on clothing that blocks the rays or putting on sun screen. While the sun’s rays can certainly cause significant physical harm and cover is essential to combat that, there are also areas of our live...
Post a Comment
Read more