Devotionals by Pastor Chuck Swindoll

So prepare your minds for action and exercise self-control. Put all your hope in the gracious salvation that will come to you when Jesus Christ is revealed to the world.
(1 Peter 1:13)

This is a time for strong resolve. We cannot, we dare not just sit back and calmly hope for the best. Those with small children cannot simply fold their hands and blandly shrug their shoulders and slip quietly into the workplace. The answer is not just earning more money to give them the best, hoping they turn out right. They need attention and training, your time and discipline—and love. They need you. They need solid, confident, authentic models. They need your touch, your affirmation. Parents, this is a time for strong resolve.

It is also a time of strong resolve for people in education and counseling as well as in pulpits, for those who write music, as well as those who write books. For those in business as well as those in professions. These days require a strong resolve. We really don’t have forever, fellow pilgrim.

Billy Graham’s excellent book, released far back in the late sixties, entitled World Aflame, strikes a similar chord:

In a declining culture, one of its characteristics is that the ordinary people are unaware of what is happening. Only those who know and can read the signs of decadence are posing the questions that as yet have no answers. Mr. Average Man is comfortable in his complacency and as unconcerned as a silverfish ensconced in a carton of discarded magazines on world affairs. He is not asking any questions, because his social benefits from the government give him a false security. This is his trouble and his tragedy. Modern man has become a spectator of world events, observing on his television screen without becoming involved. He watches the ominous events of our times pass before his eyes, while he sips his beer in a comfortable chair. He does not seem to realize what is happening to him. He does not understand that his world is on fire and that he is about to be burned with it.1

1. Billy Graham, World Aflame (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc.). Copyright© 1965 by Billy Graham.

Charles R. Swindoll. Copyright 1990 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc.

Used with permission. All rights reserved.

Listen to today's broadcast of Insight for Living with Chuck Swindoll at OnePlace.com.
Visit the Bible-teaching ministry of Chuck Swindoll at www.insight.org.