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"But the end of all things is at hand;
therefore be serious and watchful in your prayers."
(1 Peter 4:7)
Most evenings if we are at home, we will tune in to NBC and watch the longest running game show in history, Wheel of Fortune. For decades, Pat Sajak and Vanna White have teamed up to bring us a show that still has much appeal to people of all ages, and I might add, they have done quite well for themselves with the English alphabet. Sajak works four days a month and makes $15 million a year, and White makes $10 million. Some of you are thinking you would be glad to have those jobs!
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One of our church members at GHBC, Heidi Bennett, appeared on the show a few years ago and did quite well, winning and making it to the final puzzle. She did not solve the final puzzle, and I can see why; it was a very difficult one with very little help. Perhaps the most memorable Wheel of Fortune episode that I have ever seen was just a few weeks back when a contestant came ever so close to winning the $100,000 grand prize. He solved the puzzle but one second too late and therefore did not win. Ouch!
One day in the category of "thing", the word "pandemic" will appear on Wheel of Fortune, if it has not already. It is a thing alright, a horrible thing that has struck the world in the past and is doing a pretty devastating job today in the form of COVID-19. This pandemic has not just caused an interruption; rather, it has caused a massive disruption throughout the world.
In my REvangelical podcast last Saturday, I did a play on the word "pandemic" and created an acronym using the letters of the word itself. I made it through the first three letters in that episode and therefore titled it "The PAN in PANDEMIC". The P in PANDEMIC is easy; it stands for Prayer!
Peter begins in verse 7 with these words, "But the end of all things is at hand." This is similar to James 5:8, "The coming of the Lord is at hand," or John's message in 1 John 2:18, "It is the last hour." Nearly 2,000 years have elapsed, and the end has not come, so how do we interpret these verses? Well, they wrote from heaven's perspective. After Jesus came and lived, died, arose, and ascended to heaven, life on earth has been in "the last days". The next great climactic event is when Jesus comes to get His children in the rapture of the church. One pastor described what Peter said as, Jesus' return is imminent but not immediate.
In verse 7, Peter gives two imperative commands when telling us how we should pray. First, be serious. This word means sober, self-controlled, and sane and is associated with well-being. The other command is to be watchful, which means to be calm, collected, alert, and discreet. One writer said, "When a man's mind is unbalanced and his approach to life is frivolous and irresponsible, he cannot pray as he ought." (William Barclay, p. 252)
As followers of Christ, we must be serious and watchful as we pray. We should pray with expectancy, always looking for the glorious return of our Lord, and we should be as informed and alert as we can as to what is going on in our world.
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Help children build a lasting foundation
Point the kids in your life to Jesus with a copy of the Bedtime Devotions with Jesus Bible.
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The PAN in PANDEMIC
Before starting his next teaching series on the podcast, Pastor Danny takes a short break for a couple episodes to talk about how we as Christians should weather hard times, like the COVID-19 pandemic. To make the main points extra memorable, he has created an acronym: PANDEMIC. In today's episode, he discusses the first three points--PAN.
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