Good evening brethren and happy Sabbath!

Annoyed

I have to share with you a story about something that really annoyed me this week.  On Thursday I had an appointment for routine maintenance on my car.  While waiting at the dealership, my phone quit working.  The screen went black and I couldn’t do anything, not even turn it off!  

Fortunately, I had my laptop and a Wi-Fi connection, so I was able to message family and let them know what was going on.  My wife brought me my old phone, but my attempts to use it were unsuccessful.  A couple of hours later after an unscheduled trip to the phone store, I was back up and running with a new phone.

It’s all relative

While it was an annoying experience and a slight inconvenience, I had to take a moment and put it into perspective.  My week overall was going very well.  By comparison, a couple of our sisters in Christ had surgery this week and are in the midst of health trials.  Needless to say, the troubles with my phone are insignificant.

As the people of God, we are called to deal with many challenges.  While health trials can be very severe indeed, we understand that the future holds a time of great trials and tribulation. Daniel 12:1 tells us we face, “...a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation…”  It’s worrisome to know that whatever trials we face now, will pale in comparison to the trouble the Bible tells us is coming.

The question to consider

Why do I bring this up?  Is it to bring you down or depress you as we enter the Sabbath? Not at all.  But it is a topic we need to study and understand.  The question is, what exactly do we need to understand?  Is it who the key players are? Where the place of safety is? Or when all these things will begin to unfold?  No, no and no.

The question we need to consider is more fundamental than any of those things.  God is essentially asking all of humanity one, central question: Do you want to be My people?

In tomorrow’s message, we’ll take a closer look at this topic, and review some key points on what it takes to be God’s people in the end times.