Most of us have heard the old saying “a frog in a kettle.” This is where a frog is placed in a pan of water and slowly the temperature is turned up to the point where the frog is boiled to death. The image portrays a naïve frog who chooses to remain in the kettle not realizing his death will soon come.
This morning, I saw a different image. I saw a frog sitting atop a lily pad floating slowly toward a destination the frog was unaware of and thought would be impossible. The frog was indicative of those who have been programmed to believe prepared assumptions about life contrary to the evidence of Scripture, history, and the reality of human life. Their lily pad became a place of illusion and delusion.
Many in the Western Church have been floating atop lily pads of assumption that are sending them downstream to places they would never accept had they been told of the approaching reality. As this unchallenged float continues, it has created an illusion about the future where our lives and freedoms will remain secure and last forever as long as we remain atop our lily pad and remain silent.
This thinking has removed trust in God and replaced it with a lily pad of human assumption. Our assumptions have blinded us and kept us isolated from the developing harsh realities currently transpiring globally. Floating atop a dream state pad of isolation and embracing its denial is not what our world needs. Faith must assess the issues of life and then prescribe Kingdom solutions that engage those realities at a gut level where people live. Religious leaders and their followers who are still floating atop the lily pads of denial and our elected officials who continue to go with the flow of whatever wind of politics blows will be of no help when we need it most.
In the coming months, watch the relationships between Israel-Iran, Russia-Ukraine, and China-Taiwan. The Lord will use these nations to upset the lily pads of our assumptions. If you are unaware of what that means, then your lily pad of assumption is doing what it was designed to do. Prepare your faith to encounter a stark and dangerous future that is beginning to unfold. These approaching challenges are where our faith will have an opportunity to grow brighter and brighter until the full day of revelation when the Lord will make Himself known in a dramatic fashion intervening in the affairs of our world.
Only God can promise a bright future when the world seems to be devolving into greater turmoil and descending into deeper pits of despair. Those scenarios are where the power of the Gospel will be demonstrated in profound ways for those whose trust has been established upon the foundation of Christ and His great love for all people and for all nations.
May we not find comfort on a wet, slippery lily pad as safe as it may feel to keep us from sinking. It is as you say, a very false security. We need to position ourselves on the rock he provides for us that will not move when the waters swirl beneath and us. Didn’t the Psalmist say ‘the Rock that is higher than I’.