A meditation by Danny

No Cowards

Last week I thought I was responsible for writing devos and to my surprise I wasn’t!  I felt relief because I was frantically trying to gain inspiration from blogs, sermons, and of course the Bible itself.  I was in the middle of listening to the final sermon that Pastor Francis Chan delivered to his church before setting off for a life of complete servitude to communities in need in LA, when I realized it wasn’t my week.  I was about to turn the sermon off but decided not to because of the amazing turn that his message took.

Pastor Chan recited Revelation 21:1-8 as a final calling for the congregation.  Knowing the reaction of many churches who lose their head pastors, Pastor Chan decided to engage in a pre-emptive strike against the thought that the church is going to be vulnerable and weak because they lost their leader.  Revelation 21:1-8 speaks of the New Jerusalem and how a channel has finally been opened for us to live in the very midst of God.  The passage further describes all that is to be gained for those who have remained true to Christ; at the same time, it describes all that is to be lost for those who have lost their faith in cowardice.  Verse 8 reads, “‘But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars – their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur.  This is the second death.’”  Although this verse reflects many different kinds of people, when we boil down to the point, the very first, the cowardly, is the only word that can describe all those who will be rejected from Heaven.

What does this mean for us now?  That means we have gained an insight to what is waiting for us in Heaven as well as one characteristic we must lack in order to approach Heaven:  There are no cowards in heaven!  If we wish to be in His presence, we must shed from our hearts any and all cowardice.  We must be forthright in our fervor for God, we must show temerity in the witness of God, we must relinquish our fears of people and of this earth for we must recognize that we all come and go but the word will live forever.