Death is the great leveler of mankind. It is the inevitable end which awaits us all, save those who live to see the Rapture.  The Great Unknown! . . . What will we gain if we lose our own souls?  What would we give in exchange for our souls? 

Satan hates to see the progress of God’s people in this world. He seeks to steal, kill, and destroy (Jn. 10:10). But he uses a very shrewd approach, which has been copied by evil rulers throughout history. He seeks to make the victims look like the persecutors.

It occurred to Moses at some point that he had been conversing with Almighty God, yet he had never seen His face. He surely understood that God could see him, but he could not see God. He wanted to know God better.

Sometimes when God calls His people to do something it can be a little scary. Though He promised never to leave us or forsake us, when we’re facing unknown peril in pursuing His will, the road seems a little less sure than it did before. This is illustrated in the following story of a pioneer preacher here in Georgia.

George Barna said, "Americans revere the Bible, but by and large they don’t know what it says.  And because they don’t know it, they have become a nation of biblical illiterates."

Sometimes one word, or a more clearly expressed thought, can make the difference between night and day, for time and eternity.

In January of this year I suffered a stroke which left me partly incapacitated. I’ve not been able to fully use my left leg or foot since then and am actively involved in exercise and rehabilitation. The Lord has been gracious and has helped me each day to “re-learn” the use of this leg. Thanks to the assistance of my wonderful wife and kind friends, I am well on the way to recovery. But we don’t know what it means to be without body parts until we are interrupted in the usage of them. The smallest tasks, especially of mobility, suddenly become daunting.

“Bless the LORD, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits.” (Ps. 103:1-2) I have found too often in life that loud hosannas more easily come forth from a comfortable, blessed, relatively trouble-free existence than from the soul that is struggling to find the way through valleys of despair, pain, and hopelessness. 

Enoch's epitaph might have been that "He walked with God" (Gen. 5:24). What more expressive way of stating that he loved God supremely and lived His life to please Him?