Revelation 14:13 – Then I heard a voice from heaven say, “Write this: Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.” “Yes,” says the Spirit, “they will rest from their labor, for their deeds will follow them.”
God is good all the time and He loves us. This is not a nice something to repeat and then forget about as we go on our merry way. The evidence surrounds us. When we smile at each other and say something like this, we must let it sink in. As we consider God, as we increasingly know Him, He changes our lives. His love indwells us and changes us. Every day of our lives this truth is lived out and, if it were not so, we would either not be alive, or our destiny would be the horrid death of those who pass on from the first death to the eternal second death. But those who love and serve Christ are not as these, we are Christ’s very own beloved (Revelation 20:6, 14). Daily, hourly, by the minute, and by the second we walk in the love and blessings of God. Even the unbeliever is walking in the love and blessings of God.
Don’t we all know that the devil hates us? He has a special hate for those who have come to the Lord, yet he would love to devour every single human being redeemed or not. Why does he hate us so? Why does he so passionately hate us and want to rip us apart and let us lie and decay where we lie. One reason is that we were made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26), whom He hates. Also he hates us because God loves us so greatly (Jeremiah 31:3, John 3:16). The devil would just as soon kill all the unredeemed right now to make sure that they do not repent and come to Christ. People, Family, He HATES us. The only reason he cannot have his full way is because God LOVES us. It is God who is the reason and the cause that we wake every day and that we have all the blessings that we have. God loves us, watches over us, and is aware of every detail in our lives (Psalm 139:1-6, Hebrews 4:13, Luke 12:7, Matthew 6:26). God has always watched over all of His creation.
Here, in these two verses, God is reminding them that He sees all that they endure. He sees those who hold onto to him and endure the suffering and pain of this world because they love Him more than anything on this world, even their own earthly lives. God is telling the saints who come to Him during the Great Tribulation that He sees and they will get their reward. Now in this end times, the believers are still called to “love your neighbor as yourself (Matthew 22:39).” All the Antichrist worshipers who hate the Christians are to be loved and the Gospel shared with them (Matthew 28:19-20). They are then, as we are now, proof of the goodness and love of God. Those who say they belong to Jesus will forgive as they are forgiven, then and now, or we are not His (Matthew 6:14). Christians then must remember that they are only on earth at that time because they had previously rejected the grace of God, otherwise they would have been raptured. They, as we must now do, remember that we are only saved by God’s grace and not by our own works (Ephesians 2:8-9). So all the deceived people that are then persecuting and killing them are merely in the same condition that they once were (1 Corinthians 6:11).
Family, God sees what they go through and their sacrifice to continue to love. It is the same for us. Remember that we live today only because of His love and thereby His blessings. The Lord will reward those who persevere and are obedient to their calling. He will do it for them, and He will do it for us. God is good all the time and He loves us! Praise God
Psalm 150:6 – Let everything that has breath praise the Lord. Praise the Lord!
Micah 7:7 – But as for me, I watch in hope for the Lord, I wait for God my Savior; my God will hear me.
Micah 6:8 – He has shown You, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require of You but to do justly, to love mercy, And to walk humbly with Your God.