the evil day

The sort of thing I've been gently suggesting the last few 'posts' was reinforced again today.

As there are seasons in the annual cycle of earth's rotation round the sun, so there are 'seasons' as well in the bit-by-bit outworking of the purpose of the Lord.

Times when in a real and urgent way 'opportunity knocks'. Actually, it's the Lord himself who comes knocking. And the opportunity's there to welcome him in and enjoy his transforming power.

At times like that the powers of darkness kick into gear as well. There are forces of evil at work in our world, and they don't go a bomb on what God is intent on securing. They kick up a fuss and wreak their own rotten havoc wherever, however, and just whenever they can.

One of Jesus' early friends and followers was a guy called Paul. He was clever. Intelligent. A brilliant mind which enabled him to argue the socks off most folk.

Anything but a nutter, in other words.

Anyway, this guy Paul spoke in terms of there being sometimes what he called 'the evil day'. Seasons, that is, when so much was at stake, and the Lord was so much on the move, that all hell's best resources were flung at the people of God.

A kind of last ditch stand, an all-or-nothing, all-guns-blazing, take-no-prisoner bombardment of the followers of Jesus who'd become the ones through whom the Lord was patently at work.

If you want to know what it looked like, then Paul was a good guy to ask. He knew first hand the sort of thing it involved. (It doesn't make for pretty bedtime reading).

There are 'seasons' which bring such a thing. The 'evil day'.

We're living, I think, in times like that just now in our land.

Some of you reading this post may not have a clue what I'm on about.

And if that's the case then part of me thinks - be thankful! You don't really want to know this yourself too much.

But a part of me's thinking - be careful! It's maybe because you're not that much of a threat to the powers of darkness that they don't waste their time on you.

Stick close to Jesus, live full on for Jesus, and I guarantee, sooner or later, one way or another, you'll find out about such 'evil days'.

I encountered this sort of phenomenon in three different situations today.

Three different people. All of them speaking of things in their lives where what was being faced is quite hellish. Evil days.

I was chatting to folk who'd come in for their coffee this morning. And before very long the chat had gone way below the surface. A fourteen year old child whose father got ill and then died.

That happens. It's grievous and sore and it's tragic all right, but it happens. It's what comes in on the back of that that's really, really hard.

The malignant endeavours of hell itself to use such a dreadful thing to impugn the name of the Lord. To get such a child to turn her back on the One who alone can afford her the real security, strength and comfort she needs.

Hellish.

I won't go into the details of the other two. Suffice it to say they were both again pastoral situations where the individuals concerned have been exposed to a wretchedly 'evil day'. A combination of dreadful, horrendous circumstances, one thing piled on another.

All hell let loose on their lives.

And when I wrote (yesterday) about running around addressing the 'fires' on the rim of some great volcano, it's this sort of thing that I mean.

The fires of war, as the Lord moves his kingdom forward in the face of the pit of hell.

There's an awful lot more to come.