Scared Straight!

Now that Halloween is behind us and we have endured an historic storm named Sandy, a serious question looms to be answered. Perhaps economic hardship and fears of impending collapse or even bankruptcy (see my last article, “Bankrupt!?”), setting the stage for a very important Presidential election, are enough to get your attention? Are any of these things frightening to you? Do you just go on with your own life basically ignoring all that happens or do these important events give you pause to reflect and think? If you were in the direct path of Hurricane/Superstorm Sandy, I imagine you would have to at least pay some attention, if you desired to protect your life and possessions! The question all these things should make us ponder is, “Are you becoming complacent or are you Scared Straight!?”

Isn’t it interesting how an impending danger can help you get things in order? Our tendency in life is to drift off course. We have an old nature that leads us away from what is right. We are fallen human beings. We tend to drift to the left or the right of the path we should be on. It often takes something happening to threaten you personally for you to pay more attention. It takes either personal effort or else real-life uncontrolled events to keep us or force us back on track, and help us stay scared straight!

Aren’t the events on the earth today enough to make you pause and think? Wars continue to rage all over the world. Terrorist acts impact innocent lives every day and even claim the lives of United States ambassadors and citizens, as recent news stories indicate. Record drought and heat with fires and then winds and floods certainly get your attention. Storms over the past couple of years have been historic in number and power and repeatedly leveled entire areas. This latest hurricane Sandy was enormous in size, stretching some 1,000 miles across! Sandy merged with two other systems with atmospheric conditions coming together to become an historic storm, devastating much of the Northeast with flooding rains and wind and even bringing over three feet of snow to some portions of West Virginia. Damage estimates range from an amazing 30-50 billion dollars! Far worse are the nearly 100 lives claimed in the United States so far, with another 69 reported lost in the Caribbean and Canada. Perhaps this storm is enough for many to be scared straight!

Friend, I do not know where you are in your life just now. I trust you are finding life exciting and even challenging and that you are seeking to learn and grow in all of life’s experiences and even life’s trials. I trust that you have a healthy fear of the Power that our Creator has to cause the wind to blow or a storm to build up in an unusual way with several atmospheric systems coming together (forces that men cannot control, but only observe and somewhat accurately predict). I trust that you are living and learning and that you are scared straight! HE is The ONE to be feared! HE is The ONE to help you keep your life in order. HE will have HIS way in the end and the sooner you are scared straight, the better off you will be! Consider Nahum 1:3:

“The LORD is slow to anger and great in power, And will not at all acquit the wicked. The LORD has His way In the whirlwind and in the storm, And the clouds are the dust of His feet.”

Do you know HIM? Jesus Christ is the way we can know GOD for HE is our Creator and is GOD The Son. HE loves you and died, was buried and rose again to pay the eternal penalty for your sin. Not knowing HIM and knowing the Justice your sin would bring in hell, should make you scared straight!