“I have told you these things, so that in Me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” John 16:33
The Bible warns that we will face trouble in this world. So how can we rise up against fear and share the hope of Christ with others?
Joel Rosenberg discusses the importance of encouraging our government to do the right thing in the midst of enemy threats.
“Remember that the Bible is clear that government has a role in protecting us; that’s the job of government. So we need to encourage our government to do the right thing, to protect us, and to fight and win against our enemies.”
The Church plays a different role than the government, as outlined in the Great Commission in Matthew 28.
“We have to remember that as the church, we have a separate foreign policy which is ‘to go and make disciples of all nations,’ to go share the Gospel, and to love our enemies. That involves preaching the gospel, making disciples, caring for those who’ve been affected by genocide and by ISIS, caring for refugees, etc.”
Joel reminds us that we need to strengthen the church and embrace our victory in Christ.
“Jesus is going to win. Yes, evil is going to be terrible and Satan will be able to rob, kill, and destroy in the end of days, but Jesus is going to win. The Caliphate is not going to prevail, the Kingdom of Christ will. We need to trust that; we need to trust the word of God.”
He shares some ways that we can pray for Christ’s Kingdom to come in a darkened world.
“We certainly want to pray for quiet, calm, and safe stability, for the peace of Jerusalem and the country of Israel in that sense, absolutely. But we also want to pray that the Prince of Peace would be revealed to the Jewish people, to Palestinians, and to our Arab neighbors; that the Lord’s Holy Spirit would just continue to open eyes and hearts, and would change Muslims and Jews to know Jesus personally.”
“Be praying for the persecuted church, in that part of the world to be strong, to be bold, to be like in the book of Acts where, yes, they faced real opposition, but they trusted that their god was going to win, that they were going to see fruit, people’s lives were going to get saved, be changed, and blessed and I think that’s what we need to be praying for.”
As Christians, we do not have to live in fear of tomorrow because we have the hope of Christ today. Jesus has already overcome the world, and we are called to live in the light of that truth.
Joel C. Rosenberg is a New York Times best-selling author of 12 novels including and , and five nonfiction books, with more than 3 million copies sold.
The hope of Christ in a darkened world
