Gloom and Doom

RIPPED FROM THE HEADLINES
GLOOM AND DOOM
DR. JIM DIXON
PHILIPPIANS 4:4, 1 THESSALONIANS 5:18
JANUARY 25, 2009

In the Torah, in the Pentateuch, in the first five books of what we call the Old Testament, there are many wonderful stories concerning the history of the Jews. And one of those stories is found in the book of Numbers, and it’s a great story. It’s known to many of you. It’s the story of the 12 spies who are sent by Moses into the Promised Land. They had come to the edge of the Promised Land, the children of Israel under the leadership of Moses, and this was land that had been promised by God. It was a land allegedly flowing with milk and honey. It was a land of great resource and great beauty and great blessing. And now they were coming to that land.

So, Moses sent the 12 spies into the Promised Land and they came back with their report. There were 2 reports. There was the majority report and then the minority report. The majority report was negative. The majority report was doom and gloom. The majority report was given by 10 of the 12 spies, and those 10 came back and they said, “We can’t do it. We saw fortified cities in the land with walls 20-50 feet high. We saw powerful races and people groups in this land. And we saw giants. We saw the sons of Anoch,” the Anakim, sometimes in the Bible linked with the Nephilim, other times in the Bible linked with the Refaim Giants, “We were like grasshoppers in their sight and if we attempt this, if we go into that Promised Land, we will not prevail, we’ll die. We’ll be killed.” Doom and gloom.

There was the minority report given by Joshua and Caleb, just two of the twelve. They had a “can do” attitude and a faith and trust in God. They said, “Let’s go in. God has promised.” But the people of Israel listened to the majority report. The people of Israel listened to the doom and gloom, and the curse of God fell upon them and they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years.

But isn’t this true of history. Isn’t it true today? There are always majority and minority reports, and there’s always people who believe and people who don’t. There’re always people who choose to view life through the perspective of doom and gloom. This morning as we continue our Ripped from the Headlines, we look first of all in our first teaching, we look at Bad News Bears, except it’s Bad News Bearers: the bearers of bad news. There’s a lot of them out there, aren’t there? A lot of bearers of bad news. Did you see the paper this morning? Did you see the Denver Post this morning? I mean even if you get the Rocky Mountain News, you get the Denver Post on Sunday morning. The headlines of the Denver Post this morning read, “Psych Units Shutting Doors.” Psych units all over Colorado, psych units shutting doors. That’s a typical headline. That’s the kind of information most newspaper headlines bring. It’s kind of like: what’s wrong now? What’s gone wrong? What’s the current disaster? Doom and gloom. We’re bombarded by it day after day after day. It’s part of our culture. It’s part of the environment in which we live.

I didn’t see the movie Chicken Little, but I’m told that, in the movie, Chicken Little himself actually is the hero, and if that’s true, then the movie is nothing like the original story of Chicken Little. The original story of Chicken Little is very old, comes from the 19th century, the 1800’s, and in the original story an acorn falls on the head of Chicken Little. At least that’s true in some versions. In other versions a seed falls on Chicken Little’s tail. Still in other versions both the acorn and the seed fall, but in all versions, Chicken Little starts shouting, “The sky is falling! The sky is falling!” and he’s got to go tell the king. He’s got to go tell the king the world is about to be destroyed.

In the original story, Chicken Little is not a hero. He’s a negative object lesson, and he was used by parents to illustrate the fact that you don’t want to have a doom and gloom, sky-is-falling, attitude in life. Yet, that sky-is-falling attitude is out there, isn’t it? It’s kind of everywhere. There are people who say the sky is falling because of global warming. You see a lot of that. I know that in a congregation like this, and in a room like this, we have a lot diversity, a lot of different opinions, a lot of different political persuasions, and I understand that. I read a lot of scientific journals and magazines, and in my view, scientists are not as convinced as politicians are that global warming is caused by human agency. The truth is global warming has been developing over a long, long period of time.

Barb and I were just off in Alaska. We looked at some of the glaciers up there, like the Mendenhall Glacier, and these massive glaciers and ice fields are shrinking, but they explained to us up there that these ice fields and these glaciers have been shrinking slowly for 15,000 years. The earth goes through cycles. A lot of what’s happening, there may be some human agency, and to the extent there is human agency, we need to be better stewards of the earth. But the primary cause of global warming is surely solar activity. Most scientists are absolutely sure of that. The primary cause of global warming is solar activity, and we have these cycles throughout the history of our solar system. You can go to Egypt today, you can look at the great Sahara Desert, and it spans a land mass similar to the continental US. That great Sahara Desert was once, just prior to the building of the pyramids, about a 1,000 years earlier, the great Sahara was fertile. It was not desert. It was lush and there were rivers, and growing things everywhere. If we live long enough, if this earth continues long enough, if Christ tarries, it will happen again. The desert will return to being lush because all over the surface of the earth there are changes over time. People move and transfer population densities based on these changes that happen over time.

But there is no reason to shout, “The sky is falling!” There is no reason to adopt a doom and gloom attitude, which so many do. I think there is a segment of people who love to think about disaster. That’s true in finances, too. Here we are in the midst of a financial crisis and there are a lot of doom and gloom headlines. Is that not true? It seems like every time a business shuts down, every time a corporate entity goes bankrupt, it’s headlines. Every day, one after another after another after another, we’re just bombarded with what’s going wrong, what is shutting down, and there is this kind of despair that’s become epidemic, pandemic in our time and culture.

I shared about the economic crisis over a month ago, and we looked at it eschatologically. It is true that Antichrist will rise in the midst of economic chaos. You couldn’t have the rise of Antichrist in any other climate, because people like that, regimes like that, are not allowed by the people unless the people are in chaos. We saw how, in Germany, after runaway inflation in the 1920’s and the Great Depression of the 1930’s, in that environment Adolf Hitler rose and the Nazi party gained popularity. But the people in Germany in better times never would have allowed that.

And we saw how Imperial Japan, from their invasion of Manchuria and their abuse of the Chinese to the attack on Pearl Harbor and all the things that happened in that decade, was bathed in financial collapse and disaster and desperate people doing what they would not normally do.

Economic crises are scary, and one day, at the consummation, such a time will give rise to the Antichrist. I don’t believe that the financial crisis we’re in right now is that great collapse that you might see in the pages of prophecy. I think the situation we face today is grim and we feel and care and pray for all who are hurting. Some of you have lost your jobs and some of you have diminished incomes and some of you are afraid as you see your retirement shrink, and we understand that and we care and we feel. And we are in the midst of it all with you, but don’t despair.

This is nothing like the Great Depression. In March of 1933, here in the United States of America, 25% of the population was unemployed. Today our national statistic is at 7.2, nothing like the Great Depression. I fully would expect, and I think most economic counselors and advisors would expect, that this is going to turn around. It’s again a cycle, but there’s no need for doom and gloom, and the truth is sometimes negativity and doom and gloom attitudes almost fuel the problem, exacerbates the problem. We create our own reality as the economy begins to slide and businesses go under and people don’t purchase and spend. Tough times, but the answer is never to say that the sky is falling.

We live in a culture where some people worship money. Remember the words of our Lord Jesus Christ in the Sermon on the Mount, “You cannot worship God and Mammon. You cannot serve both God and man. If your primary purpose in living is the cultivation of wealth, then wealth is your god, Mammon.” Some biblical scholars debate whether Mammon was the name of a Canaanite deity. We do not know. But we do know Mammon referred to wealth, accumulated wealth and money. Jesus is just saying, “You can’t live for that if you want to worship God, you live primarily for God.” These are dangerous times because for some people their god is dying. As their retirement funds shrink, and as the economy goes south and money and wealth is not to be made or accumulated, their god is dying.

Time to look for a different god. Time to look for the one, true God and to give your heart and life to the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ. I think that in our culture there is this fascination with crime, a fascination with death, a fascination with disaster. Our daughter has as one of her friends Mark Koebrich’s daughter. Mark Koebrich is a great guy, they have a great family, and he’s on the Channel 9 news with Kim Christianson at 4 o’clock. I know most of us can’t watch the 4 o’clock news. I also know on Channel 7 there is a similar kind of early news show. I know Mike Nelson who does the weather on that is a wonderful Christian guy. So, at Channel 7 and Channel 9, at 4 o’clock each week day you have these early newscasts and the intent of these early newscasts is to be upbeat, to go away from the doom and gloom, to be a little more cheerful, to try to have happy news and to create a fun environment.

If you look at Mark and Kim, or if you watch the Channel 7 news at 7 o’clock, you’ll see a little more upbeat, a little more positive, a little more fun, but even there, if there is any crime that just happened around the city, you are going to begin with that and helicopters will hover down and you’ll get a shot of the building or the store or the business or the home wherever some disaster has taken place and that will be the lead-in story. You watch the international news and almost always they find somewhere in the world where something bad is happening, and that’s how they begin their international news. Somewhere in the world someone is doing something wrong. Something is going horribly wrong. There might be a tornado. There might be a hurricane. Might be an earthquake. Might be a devastating fire. Might be a war. Might be something, but there’s death and disaster somewhere. And so, we’re just bombarded by this, constantly, relentlessly: crime, death and disaster. There is something strange about the psychology of our culture.

In the movie Scrooged, Bill Murray plays the part of a Hollywood producer/director who believes he understands the psychology of the people, and he believes that what people are looking for is death and disaster. They want to be terrified. So, he wants to market that psychoses that permeates society. Is there any truth in that? Is there any truth in the fact that in our culture there are people who love death and disaster, who maybe feel a little bit better about themselves and their own situation if they can just focus a little while every day on people who have it worse? Is it true that we have in our culture people who find some satisfaction in looking at the suffering of others, a people who find some satisfaction in looking at tragedy? Is it true that there are people who like to be terrified, people who like to be scared, and suddenly when the TV or the movie, when it’s over they suddenly realize, “Uh, it didn’t really happen. I’m safe.” Somehow, psychologically it gives them a boost. Is that the culture in which we live?

When I was in college I majored in psychology. For a period of time, I wanted to be a psychologist or a psychiatrist. I am not a psychologist or a psychiatrist. I am a counselor and for decades I’ve done counseling. I have noticed that there is in some people this tendency to almost like a certain amount of pain and suffering and heartache. In some people there definitely is this tendency. I’ve talked to people who like to have a little bit of pain, a little bit of hurt up on the shelf. And they don’t want anyone to fool with it. They just want to have it up there on the shelf and every once in a while, they like to look at it. Their pain, their suffering, their hurt, or maybe the pain, suffering, hurt of others, but even just their own pain, suffering and hurt. They like to every once in a while, take it down and look at it, or have some people look at it with them. They want to share their pain, their suffering and hurt with other people and share it with other people. They want to keep it. It has almost become precious. It’s part of what energizes them- even some kind of negative energy, but it’s something they don’t want anyone to tamper with or take away. They don’t want anyone to say, “Get over it.” This is precious to them. We have this tendency and this attribute in our culture and in our society and in our lives.

I think it’s a scary thing, but I also think that it’s based on biblical theology. I think we can understand it theologically. The Bible tells us very clearly that God is our creator. We are the crown of his creation and we are precious to him. The Bible tells us that we were created in the image of God, the Imago Dei. We were given a very precious gift in the beginning and whether you believe God created over a long period of time, or whether you believe God created instantly, or whether you believe that God used some combination of the two, and however you view the early chapters of Genesis, whether you believe that God is using literal, historical, literature, or whether you believe that God is using some elements of parable, whatever you believe, there is no denying this: that God breathed on that first couple that are original parents, that first couple received the breath of God. And God breathed on them: the Hebrew is nephesh or ruah. The Greek is “pneuma” or “psuche.” It’s the breath of God coming upon that first couple, imparting the Imago Dei, and giving soul and spirit. There was a potential they’re never realized because the gift was abused and the image of God broken, the human race fallen. The Bible says even today our minds themselves are subjected to futility. The Greek word is mateotis, which means, “failure to attain created or intended potential.” Even today our minds have not attained created or intended potential because we are fallen.

Nothing is as it was meant to be. There is something in the midst of our brokenness that takes some kind of perverse satisfaction in death, disaster, pain, suffering, even evil – that it’s there and you understand it. When you look at the Bible in terms of prophecy, and you see as we have seen before, that one day the man of lawlessness, who is the Anti-Christ, will arise on the stage of history, but the Bible says even now the spirit of lawlessness, “anomia,” contrary to the will of God, the laws of God, the spirit of lawlessness is already pervasive in society and growing in the world – the spirit of lawlessness. When you understand that you understand the mind of man and what we’re dealing with even in our own lives and why we so desperately need a Savior. There’s this part of each of us that perhaps takes some pleasure in darkness, and that’s scary, but I think it helps explain why in the media there is so much doom and gloom. I think it helps explain why amongst the population basis that media caters to that there’s a demand for a certain amount of doom and gloom. I think it explains why you find a lot of columnists and even sports writers who realize they don’t keep their jobs and they don’t find their niche unless they have a lot of negative articles where they just rip on things, or tear things down, or criticize because there’s a whole bunch of people out there who just like to read that – a whole bunch of people.

Now I want to move into our second and final teaching and that has to do with us as Christians. We’re supposed to be very different than the world is, and we are the bearers of good news. Our lives are to be characterized by joy. The Bible says to us, “Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice.” The Bible says to us, “Give thanks in all circumstances.” The Bible doesn’t say, “FOR all circumstances.” The Bible says, “Give thanks IN all circumstances, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.”

The Bible says, “Have no anxieties about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication and with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God and the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” And the Bible says whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there be any excellence, if there be anything worthy of praise, think on these things. This is the will of Christ for us, for his people, that we would be very different than a doom and gloom world is: truly strangers and sojourners on the Earth.

I know on Tuesday many of you saw the inauguration. I think most of us at least saw part of it even if it was a replay. We wanted to see the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States, and we wanted to hear his inaugural speech. We wanted to see all the events that surrounded the inauguration. It was an amazing event in Washington, D.C. with perhaps as many as 2 million people. Whatever your politics, whatever you are politically, there has to be at least for most of us some joy that an African American has ascended the presidency. Whatever your politics, you’ve got to have some sense of joy for African American people. As you see the smiles on their faces and you look at their history and you see how for so many decades, for so many years, for far too long, Black people in America were oppressed and persecuted and sold and bought and sold into slavery. The pain and suffering of those experiences are not completely gone. I think for many African Americans the thought of anyone in their midst could rise to the highest office seemed impossible. So, there is a certain kind of rejoicing in that. There is a certain kind of joy in that.

When you look back at African American history, you see the development of music called spirituals, and you have to understand that during the time of slavery when so many African Americans were suffering, they wrote and they sang these Black spirituals, and they gave them hope in the midst of their pain. So, many of those African American slaves loved Jesus Christ. They identified with the Israelites, the children of Israel who had been sold into slavery, and so, they were inspired by those events. You look at some of these Black spirituals and even before Harry Thacker Burleigh popularized many of them some of these Black spirituals grew up collectively out of the culture and we don’t even know who wrote them. Two examples would be Swing Low, Sweet Chariot and Good News, the Chariot’s Coming. You look at Good News, the Chariot’s Coming and Swing Low Sweet Chariot and both songs refer to 2 Kings 2:11, and to Elijah and his rapture into Heaven as he was caught up in the whirlwind and carried up to Heaven in a fiery chariot, a chariot of fire. So, Black Americans in the midst of their slavery found hope and joy in the midst of that kind of a story- Good News, Chariots Coming, Swing Low, Sweet Chariot, pick me up, rescue me, God deliver me. I think it’s true of Christians, whether they are Black or White, whether they are red, yellow, black or white.

It’s true of Christians that we are called in the midst of whatever circumstance we are in to find hope and joy, to sing songs, to find the good news. I look at the Church of Jesus Christ today, and in this culture in which we live, and I feel we’ve just kind of sold out sometimes. We’re too much like the world. We’ve allowed the world to squeeze us into its mold and we don’t have the joy and the hope that Christ wants us to bear and to carry. I marvel too that even in churches sometimes you see pastors who don’t seem to understand the good news of the Gospel. They don’t seem to understand the covenants of God.

Some years ago, when our church was young, almost 26 years ago, Bob Beltz, who was our teaching pastor and who served Christ with me here at Cherry Hills, we were invited by one of the original members of our church to go to a funeral service. This individual had a woman who was a friend of his die, and the funeral was to be in a PCUSA church, a Presbyterian church on the west side of town. Because we were ordained Presbyterians, the founding member of our church thought well, maybe Jim and Bob would like to go to this funeral with him since it was at a Presbyterian church and there’s this Presbyterian pastor. He really didn’t have that right, but we did go. We went and we sat there and the pastor got up as he’s doing the memorial for this woman who’d died, and the pastor said, “We remember the covenant of the rainbow in the book of Genesis where God makes this covenant with the people of the Earth that he would provide the rainbow of colors. That God would provide the oranges and the greens and the blues and the purples and the pinks. And God would say to the people of the world, ‘Enjoy them. Enjoy all the colors of the Earth. Enjoy the pinks and the blues and the greens and the yellows. Enjoy all the colors – this is the covenant of the rainbow.’”

I found myself thinking, “What in the world is he talking about?” In the book of Genesis there is a covenant of the rainbow after the Great Flood. God makes a covenant called the Covenant of the Rainbow where he promises never to destroy the world again by flood, but there is no covenant of the rainbow where God says, “Hey, enjoy all the colors.” That’s just not there.

Then he moves to Ecclesiastes 2, where it says, “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.” And then he goes to Ecclesiastes 5, which says, “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow you die.” He said, “This is what she knew, this is what she understood. It’s all vanity. Eat, drink, be merry, for tomorrow you die. She ate, she drank, she was merry, and she’s dead.” I’m like, “Where is this going?”

As we went home, we were just looking at each other, just incredulous. I marvel at what’s out there. I marvel at what is out there, and it’s scary. So, even in some churches there are people who don’t know about the covenants of God and they don’t even understand the New Covenant, which is the New Testament. They don’t understand the Gospel. They don’t understand the Good News. I hope you do. I hope you have such joy that nobody can take it away. No matter what’s happening in your life, financially, or medically, or relationally, in any way, that you have joy that no one can take away. We should as Christians, as followers of Jesus, because of the Good News.

There is the Good News of forgiveness by the cross, and how precious is this, that we are forgiven by his shed blood. We receive that forgiveness the moment we believed and we received him as Lord and Savior. He cancelled our debt and forgave our sin. How good is that? When you have the words of the Apostle John in the little letter of I John 1, John writes, “This is the message we’ve heard from the beginning. God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not live according to the truth. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. But if we confess our sin, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” How incredible is that? How wonderful is that? The Good News.

And we have the Good News of salvation by grace through faith. Ephesians 2:8-9, “By grace you are saved, through faith – it was a gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.” So, salvation by grace and when we come to Jesus and we embrace him as our Savior and as our Lord, and give our lives to him, he saves us. Not by our works, but by his. Not by our sacrifice, but by his. And that is Good News! Incredible News! We are bound for Heaven. We are bound for glory. In the words of that song by Peter, Paul and Mary, the strain, “Bound for glory.”

The Good News of the divine community, how cool that God decided to set a community up where we could form friends and learn to love, and that’s good news. Earlier in I John 1, you have these words, “We are writing this so you may have fellowship with us. Our fellowship is in the Father and in his son Jesus Christ, and we are writing this that our joy might be full. Jesus said, ‘I’ll build my church and the gates of Hell will not prevail against it.” I could look out, even in this service I can look out, I see many of you who have found friends here, and you love each other. Your friendship that you’ve found in this divine community is life long, but it’s more than that. It’s eternal. You’ve found eternal friends, so after 10,000 years, after a million years, after a trillion years, you’11 still sit down together and laugh because this is the gift of God and the divine community. That news is so good and the joy so great.

We have the Good News of the heavenly cause. We live in a world where so many people have no purpose. They just go through their rituals every day, day after day, but they basically have no purpose. It just feels to them like life doesn’t have meaning, but you see we have been given a heavenly cause. In these times particularly, one of my favorite passages is found in the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus said, “Do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you drink, or about your body or what you will wear or put on. Consider the birds of the air, they neither sew nor reap nor gather into barns and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them all. And are you not of much more value than they? Which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to your span of life? So, why are you anxious saying, ‘What shall I eat, what shall I drink, what shall I wear?’

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They neither toil nor spin, and yet I tell you, I promise you, Solomon in all of his glory was not arrayed like one of these flowers. If God so clothes the lilies of the field, which are here for a day and tomorrow are gone, how much more will God clothe you, oh yee of little faith. So, why are you anxious saying, ‘what shall I eat, what shall I drink., what shall I wear?’ The nations seek after such things, and your Heavenly Father knows that you need them all, but seek first, seek foremost, the kingdom of God in its righteousness and I’ll give you everything you need.”

So, what is our purpose? It is the Kingdom of God in its righteousness. We wake up every morning as followers of Jesus Christ, and we serve a heavenly cause. We serve the Kingdom of God in its righteousness. We seek justice and fairness on the Earth. We seek to free the oppressed, to help the poor, we preach the Gospel, we bring Good News, we talk about grace and mercy, and we learn to love. It’s all about the Kingdom of God in its righteousness and we seek to live lives that would put a smile on the face of Jesus. We have a purpose in living and a purpose in dying and we have the promise of God’s protection. We have the promise of God’s protection as we live out our days. Isn’t that wonderful?

You know my brother Greg ministers often down in Central America; I’ve mentioned him before. Sometimes he goes to El Salvador and Guatemala, or Nicaragua, or Costa Rica, and helps to train indigenous pastors. Often times when Greg is down there, he preaches or he teaches and sometimes when Greg and I are talking, he says, “I need a sermon illustration that will illustrate this, or something that will illustrate that,” and so, we talk about some ideas. Occasionally Greg will say to me, “Remember that story you told some years ago? Tell me about that.” And then he’ll go down there and use it. Just two weeks ago he mentioned a story I’d told about one of the kings of Abyssinia.

Abyssinia is the ancient name of the nation of Ethiopia and northeast Africa. There was a king in the 19th century in Abyssinia, and for the sake of the western world, took the title Theodore, King Theodore, Loved of God. He challenged Great Britain. Great Britain in the Victorian era had a citizen in Ethiopia, by some accounts of the story his name was Campbell, in other accounts his name was Cameron, but he was a British citizen and he was in Abyssinia and for some reason King Theodore had him incarcerated and thrown into the dungeons. He hadn’t really done anything wrong, and so, England demanded that they release their British citizen. King Theodore refused. He thought, “England’s a long ways away. Britain is oceans away, what can they do to me? I don’t need to bend to the knee of Britain. I’m going to continue to hold their citizen in prison.”

You know what the British did? They sent an army of ten thousand. Is that incredible? They sent the British fleet by sea, an army of 10,000 soldiers. They came to the Indian Ocean. They came to the Gulf of Aden not far from the Red Sea. They came ashore and 10,000 British soldiers marched 700 miles inland through the desert until they came to the mountains of central Abyssinia, or Ethiopia, and to the fortress that Theodore had built called Magdala. And when King Theodore looked out and he saw 10,000 British soldiers marching on his fortress, he was stunned. He did not think that possible. He was cast down from his throne. The British citizen was released and the British army carried him on their soldiers to the sea, put him on that ship, and they went back to Britain. It cost $25 million. It might seem foolish, it might seem foolhardy, it might seem like it wasn’t good fiscal behavior, but you see, the truth is Great Britain wanted the world to know that they had the will, that they had the means, and they had the power to protect their citizenry.

I promise you that if you are a Christian, if you follow Jesus Christ, you have a Lord who has the will, who has the means, who has the power to protect you. And so, we pray, when any of you are sick, when any of you are suffering, when any of you are afraid, we pray and we reach out to each other and we seek to care for each other. And we’ve seen healings. We’ve seen God do amazing things, and yet I admit Christ is more concerned with saving the soul than he is with saving the body. Sometimes it is true, I think if God sees us go astray and he sees our souls threatened, sometimes I think God would take our physical lives to protect our souls to keep us from losing our souls as we walk away. Because once we’ve come to him, once we belong to him, he never lets us go. This is good news because he wants us forever and ever and ever with him! He loves us like that. He not only protects; he provides because he is Jehovah Jireh. He is the Lord who provides.