Faith Knows for Sure

When Salvation began to live in me, church hugging was so easy to do. It was only natural to me, to fall onto the shoulders of people who I hoped were in Jesus.

But the Bible observes that there's a season for every event in life, and that even seasons of embracing do leave, even when the love of Jesus remains.

One problem that makes hugging so uncertain now, isn't the perils of a pandemic, but the wrong expectations and feelings in many hearts.

We are living in a season, now, when everywhere from the Internet to church gatherings, we're subject to lustful expectations instead of the kindness in church hugs.

And, all too often now, those wrong expectations are being taught as doctrine.

"These are the days when men call good evil, and evil good," the Bible says.

The Bible's account of David and Jonathan, for example, is being falsely depicted as an expression of Christian love. Even reputable websites, like Bible.com, have begun to want us to believe on content that glorifies David and Jonathan.

But truth is, Jonathan perished in a terrible way, without faith in Jesus, while David lived on and was convicted in Spirit of being a woeful sinner. In fact, David's foresight that he needed the Savior, the promised Messiah, began before he killed Uriah, before his first child died, and before his adult children were overcome by sins.

The Bible says David was a man after God's own heart, not because God is so automatically forgiving and good to us, but because David always repented, regardless of whether the repentance came with tears or not.

Jonathan didn't have that opportunity in life. He didn't have prophets speaking into his life, let alone the love and power and hope of Jesus.

Sometimes, I wonder, for Jonathan's sake, whether God made a bridge, in Jesus, for Jonathan's soul to cross from death to life in Christ, as it seems happened in God's conversion of Elijah to John the Baptist and possibly King Saul to the humble but stern New Testament Paul.

Just generally, I don't believe it's Heaven's way to reincarnate those who've passed away. I believe Christians pass from life, to heavenly rest, to life eternal in a whole new earth. So I am not saying it's Heaven's way to bring lost souls back through reincarnation. But I realize God puts His hand on individual souls for a reason, sometimes, like in bringing Lazarus back so he would not perish without his Savior. And I wonder, sometimes, whether God had a plan for Jonathan's redemption in any way.

There are some answers the Bible doesn't give us.

But one thing we know for sure: Repentance and faith in the Savior redeemed David; and, in the here and now, faith in Jesus has released us from the curse of David's sins.