Healing in God's perfect time

2:24 p.m. Today's project was to listen to the intensely personal, tragic, convicting and even intermittently hilarious testimony of Victor Marx at our church this morning. Victor is a martial arts champion and has a nationwide ministry to imprisoned youth. But for the grace of God, he might have been in their place. I am glad we got there early to sit up front because his active presentation has to be seen to be believed!

Victor opened with Revelation 12:7-11:

And war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer. So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world;and his angels were cast out with him.

Then I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, "Now salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brethren, who accused them before our God day and night, has been cast down. And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they did not love their lives unto the death."

We heard of the way that the devil assigned his demons to actively attack and discourage believers, in an effort to rob us of our testimony and make us ineffective, self-condemned non-witnesses for Christ. And the evil crimes committed in this world are directly caused by the influence of Satan on the perpetrators, but as our speaker made very clear, the fault and shame for crimes such as child abuse is strictly on the perpetrator, not the victim. Victor shared about his own childhood experiences at the hands of extreme abusers and the mentally ill, and the way that God can forgive and save, and usher into heaven even the most vile of sinners. Listen to what the Apostle Paul, that great defender and expositor of our faith, wrote of himself in I Timothy 1:13-15:

And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord who has enabled me, because He counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry, although I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent man; but I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly in unbelief.

And the grace of our Lord was exceedingly abundant, with faith and love which are in Christ Jesus.

This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of which I am chief.

Couldn't many of us who were saved from a life of utter disregard for God and His Word, say the same thing? Only the perfect timing of our salvation prevented us from falling into the depths of degradation, or even into a life of crime.

There is no one who cannot be saved!

As we go forward this week, daily confessing and repenting of our sins to God, while drinking in both the challenge and comfort of scripture, let's pray to be open to sharing the great treasure we've found in Christ, instead of keeping Him to ourselves. We will all be the richer for it!

Who can tell what our faithfulness might accomplish? Perhaps for the person we witness to, that day will be "the day of salvation."