Another School Shooting

 

Good day, I’m Duane Matz and welcome to Today’s Living Word.

 

I received the text yesterday afternoon. Six people dead (seven counting the shooter) in a school shooting at a private Christian School in Nashville. As I read the reports some words jumped out at me. “Two automatic rifles and a handgun,” “the suspect identified as transgendered,” and “private Christian school.”

 

Anyone of these phrases are flashpoints for finger pointing, and we need to be careful not to be drawn into that fray. If you want to point a finger, point it at sin! Point it at the one who is behind all sin…..the devil, whom Jesus described in Jn 8:44 as “a murderer from the beginning.”

 

As these incidents of senseless killings increase in frequency, know this about the devil, his time is short and he is furious. Rev 12:12 tells us, Woe to the inhabitants of the earth and the sea! For the devil has come down to you, having great wrath, because he knows that he has a short time."

 

One of his strategies is to seek out the isolated for his prey and in a world that is becoming increasingly isolated through social media, he has no shortage of victims. 1Pe 5:8 Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.

 

It’s all part of his strategy to separate individuals from the love of God. In these times of uncertainty, let us encourage one another to stay the course, to pray for the families of the victims,  and to remember, Ro 8:38 For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, 39 nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 

I’m Duane Matz and that’s Today’s Living Word.