Our Greatest Need in These Unsettling Times

Congratulations to the coronavirus for bringing unity and helping us find common ground again. We now mutually agree on our greatest needs – toilet paper and hand sanitizer. Stores were emptied of both, but fear and panic were found in large quantities – another commonality among us.

Please don’t misunderstand. We should safeguard our families. But calm, sound-mind precautions will always serve us better than fear (see 2 Timothy 1:7). How do we not have fear in such unsettling times? We increase our faith through God’s Word and attain His peace through prayer. The Bible instructs us not to worry about anything, but pray about everything, and if we do we will experience God’s supernatural peace (see Philippians 4:6-7).

These are times to pray more, not panic more.

But, not everyone does that. Perhaps it’s good that something slowed us down, caught our attention to let us take a look at the brevity of life. However, if being quarantined increased screen time, with the magnitude of immorality there, imagine the implications.

You see, we’ve always had a virus, one people don’t like to talk about. We’re infected, but people reject the remedy.

Our sickness is sin. Caught from Adam and Eve from the beginning of time, it has spread throughout the globe. It was a pandemic long before coronavirus, but the worse sin gets the more people ignore it. And believers are condemned if they warn of it, so it continues to spread its toxins and infect our world.

Imagine if we were all in denial and ignored the coronavirus. Imagine how much faster a virus would spread if people didn’t use hand sanitizer. That’s what’s happened with sin. Many people deny Christ’s purification for them; consequently, many will die (spiritually). Yet they aren’t panicked about it, except over someone else mentioning it.

Imagine warning people about the life-threatening condition of the coronavirus and people saying “Don’t judge me. It’s my choice. I can do what I want.” (Sounds like a child, doesn’t it?)

“Yes, you can, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t warn if we care.”

Just as coughing around others affects them, sin affects all of us and has far-reaching consequences. Those others may include our children and grandchildren. Unfortunately, we can’t just stay in our homes to keep away from it like the coronavirus. Nowadays, it comes through our phones, computers, and TV screens.

Denial doesn’t make something go away and ignorance is not bliss.

But there is good news.

In 2 Chronicles 7:14 we're told if we humbly seek God in prayer and turn from sin, then He will hear and heal our land. Psalm 66:18 concurs God cannot answer our prayers until our sin is removed. But 1 John 1:9 assures if we confess our sins, God will forgive us and cleanse us from all our sins (summarized).

However, to confess, we must first acknowledge we are sin-sick and need the Great Physician.

Jesus’s blood, shed on the Cross, is our soul sanitizer – it cleanses us from all our sin. 100 percent. Guaranteed.

But we have to use it.

Every time we claim there is no disease of sin and insist wrong is right and right is wrong, we spread sin and infect our family, our friends, neighbors, and coworkers.

"Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; Who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; Who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" (Isaiah 5:20 NKJV)

And there’s more good news. For those who genuinely confess and trust Jesus Christ as Savior and as Lord, we receive the Holy Spirit who imparts gifts of wisdom, strength, and guidance. In addition, we reap fruits such as love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Wouldn’t you say our world could use more of those things?

The truth is this: Our greatest need is not toilet paper or hand sanitizer; it’s the cleansing, sin-sanitizing work of Jesus Christ.

Copyright © 2020 Penny Cooke, used with permission.