Scarier than Covid 19

During the day, it's easy to just shrug the shoulders to the Covid 19 news you hear and see. After all, what can you do? There's nothing most of us can do about the rising number of cases, the unruly masses who love to go out without masks and defy distancing, the number of deaths and the horrors of catching the virus, and the growing unemployment and unrest. [Picture by Amanda Elizabeth, Pixabay].

So you just set aside everything you saw and go back to the things you've been busying yourself with in this lockdown. You rest content in the fact that the best thing you can do to help is to stay home. Just stay inside and everything's going to be okay. It's a comforting thought during the day.

But not in the wee hours of the early morning when you're the first to wake up and it's still dark and too quiet (made more eerily quiet by the lockdown), all you hear are the periodic chitter and chatter of birds and insects checking to see if all's clear for their morning loiter. In this silence, your thoughts cannot but wonder how long this crisis will go on.

Dawn gives you a clear head to see too clearly how the positive cases keep rising without letup and how your small funds left keep dwindling everyday--and you have no idea how to make more money or where food and supplies would come from next. You realize these things more and up close in the dead quiet and darkness of dawn. Your powerlessness dawns on you and you become desperate for quick solutions.

But there's no where else to turn. Sometimes it's unbelievable. Problems used to be easily solved with salary advances, credit or promissory notes. Now, all these no longer work. You suddenly feel sweating cold when face-to-face with reality. Where do you turn to? Okay, some are still employed or in business online and making a good living. But the majority of us are not. And that's talking worldwide.

Do you realize what happens if this goes on? The problem will get to your doorstep sooner or later, especially when there are no more buyers and no product is moving. So don't sit content that you are "blessed" with a livelihood now while others aren't and brag that God's favor is on you and not on them.

It's easy to say we turn to God. I know that for a fact. I am a believer of Jesus Christ. But when you see some pastors and Christians getting the virus and dying, or some churches physically gathering and worshiping on a Sunday and catching the virus, you begin to wonder. Why is God letting this happen? Has he stopped listening? It's a much scarier scenario if God has stopped listening even if we pray in Jesus' Name. I mean, why does the virus prevail despite of all churches worldwide praying that it stop? God not answering is scarier that Covid 19.

How long have we been praying? Four months?

Yeah, there are patients that recover. But that does not negate the fact that many others are dying--worldwide--and the numbers swell. We can survive (for now) by wearing a mask and observing distancing, but for how long? Having a so-called "new normal" is no guarantee the problem will be over. Or even if a vaccine becomes available--and even if it does, experts say it'll take a long time--which may even lead to the rule of the anti-Christ eventually when done with an embedded RFID chip requirement.

I'm NOT an alarmist. I'm merely telling you some facts that are already here. The point is, these are times we should see that only God has the real answer--and He's not giving it, at least not for the moment. He has a right timing, but getting that timing means we get really serious with Him, and I don't mean we should go on with our worship services, go online with our live-stream preaching and all that, or post more bible passages or inspirational stuffs--though these are good, but they are not what God wants to be done today.

We all know 2 Chronicles 7.14 (and sometimes we abuse it just to get attention from people). But what God stresses here first is humility. So, where is humility today? It doesn't mean just being nice and looking spiritual on Facebook or talking like Mr. Nice Guy. Or preaching with either a religious or bombastic voice tone. It's not giving relief goods and showing it off to the world.

God wants us to pray. But what kind of prayer? Churches just pray for God's help so they can reach more people, make an impact and invite them later to their churches and increase membership, income and influence. But God wants prayers that seek his face. What do we seek when we pray? It's even wrong to seek provisions for our ministry, outreach or missions when God says we should seek His face. HIS FACE.

And then turn from our wicked ways. Anything we do for God that isn't God's ways are wicked ways. There is no righteousness outside of GOD. It's worse when we do things using worldly or earthly ways, in the same way the secular world does them. Jesus came and showed us how he did everything in the systems of heaven, solely from the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit and on the accurate directions of the Father. Church is not like that.

So, when dawn comes and I spend time at the Throne Room amid the quiet and darkness and ask God about the present situation and when all this is going to stop, God doesn't answer. Instead, he tells me what he requires. He tells me what he plans and how we should flow with it.

Is there still hope? Of course there is. BIG HOPE. Better than what they're offering here. It's not in the new normal of this world where the remedy is to get used to the virus. It's in Jesus, who has the authority and power to rebuke the virus with a single Word and send it straight to the Pit, in real time.