How Shall We Die?

In 2 Kings chapter 7 we see an interesting story where the people of Israel are under siege by the Syrian army. Because of this siege the people of Israel were starving to death. They were helpless, hungry, and desperate. In fact, in chapter 6, we see that they are so desperate that people are literally eating their children to survive and then having arguments with each other because others who promised to eat their children are now refusing to eat their children. That’s messed up. And that’s SERIOUSLY desperate.

In chapter 7, we pick up the story with four lepers who are sitting outside the city gates. And here they have this discussion over a certain looming question: How shall we die? 

The options they have determined for themselves were as follows: 1) Stay outside the gate and die, 2) go into the city and starve with everyone else, or 3) go to the Syrians and hope they have mercy and spare them or else they will die there as well.

They go with option 3.

Upon their arrival to the Syrian camp, they discover something odd. The Syrians are no longer there, and they have left everything behind. The lepers decide to take advantage of the situation and begin to plunder the area of silver and gold and sit down and begin to feast on the food left behind.

Then they get a sudden moral cramp in their brain and realize they shouldn’t be hoarding this all for themselves why thousands of their brethren are dying inside the city walls. So they decide to go and let the king know of the circumstances.

---

Have you ever been so desperate that you begin to make a list of the ways you could die and try to choose which way of dying may be the least painful way to die?

Perhaps it isn’t death but it is still a desperate situation.

Either way, you feel like there are no other options. Either we die where we stand, or we die another way. But in the end, to the mortal mind, the picture looks bleak.

All the while not realizing that God has already been in the background working a miracle and providing a way for you to survive. Providing a way out of the desperate situation. Providing a solution to your problem. Providing the answer.

This is exactly what happened with the American Church (in a massive corporate kind of way) in the 2016 election season. We saw a desperate situation – we could potentially end up with one of the vilest, evil, and corrupt politicians to have ever walked the streets of Washington DC…

…OR we could end up with an immoral, crass, foul-mouthed, perverted old billionaire who likes to trade in his wife for a new model when the old one “wears out”…

And thus we began to make a list of all the ways we could die and then proceeded to choose what we felt was the least painful way and we ran with it.

I get it…I do. Hillary is disgusting. Her voice makes me want to slam my face into a brick wall covered in shards of glass. And lest be honest…she would’ve been terrible for this nation, for Christians, for freedom, for all of us!

But so will be the case with the now President-elect Donald Trump. And yet, this is the route Christians decided to take. They looked at all the ways to die and said, “This seems to be the least painful way to die.” and they ran with it.

We can speculate all day long about where things will go in the next four years. Unlike many of my fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, I do not have a very positive outlook on the future of President Trump. His actions within days of being elected have demonstrated that he is no different from the ones in DC and will simply bring us more of the same. So no, I’m not leaping and jumping with joyful anticipation about the so-called “wrecking ball” President Trump like others in my circles.

But I don’t want to remain negative about the future either.

So perhaps….while many are contemplating the question, “How shall we die?” God is working tirelessly in the background to provide a solution, an answer, a way out.

And that is where my hope will stand.

Not in our government.

But in our God.

I believe He is right now raising up prophetic and powerful voices to speak into the generations coming. I believe He is raising up an army of the faithful remnant who chose not to ask,”How shall we die?” but rather chose to ask, “How shall we live in faithful obedience to our Lord and Savior?”

And a great awakening is indeed coming. A revival of the Church in America is brewing. Not because of Trump, but in spite of him. Not because of the unfaithful Church who compromised when compromise should have never been on the table, but in spite of them. Some things are going to need to take place, that’s for sure. Things I discussed in another article I wrote, “The Missing Spark of Revival”.

More trials and tribulations await us. But on the other side, we will find an empty enemy camp full of gold, silver, and food waiting to be plundered. And it won’t be because of anything we did…but it will all be because of what God chose to do.

And that is the future and promise we need to hold to.

Stop asking “How shall we die?” and start asking “How shall we live?”