His Encouragement #195

Welcome to His Encouragement Thursday! I don’t know about you, but Thursdays are my struggle day of the week. By Thursday, I have already been working hard at school and at home, and I just wish it would hurry up and be Friday already. LOL! I definitely need a little extra Jesus time on Thursdays.

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The wicked plots against the righteous and gnashes his teeth at him, but the Lord laughs at the wicked for He sees that his day is coming.

Psalm 37:12-13 (ESV)

The wicked sure do plot. They think they are so smart. They think they will win.

Their thinking is confounding to me for a couple of reasons.

First, no human has been able to live forever on this earth. Enough time passes and eventually all people die. Sure, you can pass down your evil, nefarious plans and assume those who follow after you will keep to your plan, but even Solomon discusses the futility of this in Ecclesiastes when he writes, “What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever” (1:3-4). There is no guarantee once you die that anything you did on earth — good or bad — will remain. What evil people don’t realize is that when they leave this earth, most people are happy they are gone. One of the saddest “WHOA!” verses of the Bible occurs in 2 Chronicles 21:20: [Jehoram] was thirty-two years old when he began to reign, and he reigned eight years in Jerusalem. And he departed with no one’s regret. They buried him in the city of David, but not in the tombs of the kings” (emphasis mine). No one was sad the day Jehoram died. And he was so hated by the people they wouldn’t even bury him with his fathers. Did evil Jehoram have any control over this? Nope. He was dead and so were his evil plans.

Evil people’s thinking also confounds me because they believe they will get away with something. They think their evil plans hatched in darkness won’t be seen by God. They consider themselves smart. But they are not. God sees everything (Proverbs 15:3) and God is in control of every leader’s time (Daniel 2:21). There is nothing that can be done that God does not know about, and He allows what He allows because it will serve His plan. It’s weird to me that someone would plan something and think they are in control of anything where God’s people are concerned.

And as confounded as I get by the stupidity of evil people, what is comforting to me is that God laughs. He laughs at them. Evil people think they are so smart, and God just laughs. And why does He laugh? Because Ecclesiastes 1:3-4 — a generation comes, a generation goes. And what happens when we die? We stand before God. That DAY is coming for all of us, even the evil, wicked people. No one, regardless of what people think, gets a pass from standing before God and making an account of his/her life. God knows this. In fact, God SEES this. He sees the day the wicked will stand before Him.

There is a lot of wicked in this world. It is hard to deal with. It makes angry feelings and frustrated feelings and hopeless feelings. Take heart, dear reader. God sees all, He knows all, and He laughs at the plans of the wicked. Maybe it only helps a tiny little bit, but one day SOON the wicked will get exactly what they deserve. God will fix everything and make all things right again. God will fight for us; we need only be still…and wait on Him (Exodus 14:14)!

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NOW, IT’S YOUR TURN!

WHAT BIBLICAL VERSE IS ENCOURAGING YOU TODAY?