What You Absolutely Need To Know
Word-Of-The-Day: ‘(38) For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, (39) neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ (Romans 8:38-39)
Paul’s proclamation to the Romans at the end of Chapter 8 is a powerful statement on what Paul knows about Jesus. We often ignore some items of knowledge because they are not important to us. I know what a tree is and what a bird is, and can identify common trees and birds, but for many I couldn’t tell you the difference between a swallow and a pigeon, or an oak tree from a birch. It has never been that high on my list to know in detail ornithology or botany. I don’t believe I’ll ever be in that situation where I need to know the airspeed or the difference between a European swallow versus the African swallow in order to cross a bridge, for example.
What is important to me may not be important to you, but we all need basic knowledge to understand each other and live together in our communities. We need to know a modicum of math, reading and speaking English, and some skills (like driving and avoiding alligators) to live in Southwest Florida. We need to know the price of goods before we buy them and understand the value behind the price. A gallon of milk that costs $3.49 would be OK, while one costing $2.49 may be questioned (too cheap) as well as one costing $4.49 (too expensive). There is a certain amount of geography we need to know; where is the grocery store, the church, or the gas station? How do we get there? (If you use GPS to get to the grocery store every week, you may need to pay more attention on where you’re going…)
The most important thing we should know is the Love of Jesus to us, His church. Paul understood that we will always have things that occur around us that will have us question; question our situation, question our abilities – anything we encounter could be questioned if we doubt. Doubt comes from a lack of knowledge, ‘I don’t know’ begins doubt. What we should be certain of is Jesus. I don’t know about birds, so there are some facts that I may doubt about them. Through the application of the study of Scripture, the Fellowship I have with other Christians, and by observing having prayers answered, and the Holy Spirit’s guidance, I know that Jesus does love me and through the Holy Spirit is always with me.
The proclamation that Paul makes is one that we as Christians should all share uniformly and in unison. We may have doubt in our current worldly situation or in knowing some events that could eventually affect us, but there should never be a doubt that Jesus loves you and will always be with you – all you have to do is to accept Him as Lord, ask Him for forgiveness of your sins, and obey His Word!
