“Plan To Say "Yes"”

Sunday, October 04, 2015

There was another shooting on a college campus this past week. At a community college in Oregon, a man came onto the campus with multiple guns and sinister plans to kill. He killed nine people before he turned the gun on himself.

Perhaps the most harrowing part of the story is the account relayed by one student of how the gunman made people stand, then asked them if they were Christians, and then proceeded to shoot them if they answered “yes.” This story—shared by several major news outlets—got me thinking about my confession.

When I was a child, teachers in my Bible classes and devos would often ask me, “If someone held a gun to your head and asked if you were a Christian, would you say ‘yes’ or ‘no’?” And in a moment of pure transparency, I admit that I hated the question because I thought that sort of thing would never actually happen. That’s the kind of thing that happened in ancient times or in countries where Christianity is against the law. And since the only country I knew of where that was true was China, I just planned to never visit China.

But that view was never correct. Even when I felt that way, there was still a chance that I would be asked to die for my faith. An Oregon community college is not the place one would expect these things to happen, but they did happen. And our lives are not where we expect that kind of thing to happen, but they may yet happen.

The solution to this is not that we would start looking over our shoulders and being suspicious of everyone as a possible threat. The solution is rather that we must put our faith in Jesus Christ when things are going well. The solution is to trust that even if someone wanted to take our lives for our faith in him, we would still be safe. The solution is that we must “not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul.” But rather, we must “fear him who can destroy both body and soul in hell” (Matt. 10:28).

This kind of ultimate trust takes a serious focus on the things we cannot see. It takes a serious determination every day to be true to him no matter the threats it may bring. And it takes a serious conviction that no matter what we face here, God is actually able to deliver us to something so far greater!
 

- Dan Lankford, evangelist

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