Living Life in a Living Hell

The telling of remembrances is a practice God instituted early in the Holy Scriptures. When the Israelites were brought out of Egyptian bondage they were instructed to establish a tradition of celebrating the Passover feast. The two-fold purpose of this regularly repeated celebration was to remind Israel of God’s delivering power and to preserve and bear the record of His deliverance from generation to generation.

The sharing of a Christian’s personal story serves the same dual purpose. It reminds the teller and the Christian reader of God’s goodness. At the same time, it acquaints a reader who does not know the Lord with the benefits of accepting God’s love. How a person chooses to exercise his free will regarding God determines both the development and the outcome of his story. Real life does not begin until that point in time when one chooses to acknowledge God and to accept His loving care. The earlier one admits that God, as Creator, has authority to order life, the more of God’s blessings can be claimed. By the same token the sooner one submits to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, the more Satan’s pitfalls can be avoided. Only in God’s family are defeats made triumphs. Only God can make dreams come true. There is plenty of testimony in "Living Life in a Living Hell" to indicate the vast difference between the miserable life he suffered before Christ and the abundant life he has enjoyed since Jesus entered his heart. Flip’s early years without Jesus were disastrous; his current walk with the Lord is full of joy and peace. Your author has made every effort to give glory to God.

Too often a storyteller gets caught up in his own story that he deludes his reader with the notion that living without God can be an exciting adventure. This is very unfortunate for the reader because there is nothing adventurous or exciting about trying to survive without God. In fact, outside of God’s family, life is a total disaster and brings misery to the sinner as well as to everyone his life touches. Your author knows these truths very well.

This record of remembrances is not intended to give any place to the devil. Mr. Sparks has absolutely no desire to boast of Satan’s deceitfulness or to glory in the sinful condition of a man without God. Rather, this book’s only purposes are to point each reader to Almighty God’s tender loving care and to display God’s gift of everlasting mercy; a gift available to anyone who will receive it by accepting Jesus as savior.

"Living Life in a Living Hell" is an accurate description of the two sides of life-one of which each of us must choose. Picture life as a phonograph record (vinyl disc on which music was recorded in earlier years of electronics). While one side is our Messiah’s terrible suffering and agonizing death, the flip side is our own redemption from the curse of sin. The flip side of life spent in the shadow of Calvary’s cross is a life spent in the hopeless desolation of this world. In fact, if life were a phonograph record, side one would hold the greatest love song ever written. All music notation, lyrics, instrumentation, and instructions are found in God’s Word, the Bible. Also included in His Word are many arrangements and various renditions of that same love song-God’s love for man. "--My God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus." (Philippians 4:19) Side two of the record of life is filled with the unknown song of destruction. Only the form of destruction is unknown, because God has described the ending of both sides of this record. "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Romans 6:23)

Hopefully, these remembrances will inform the reader that God’s mercy is available to everyone. Furthermore, it is the prayer of this storyteller that each reader will recognize and accept God in order to benefit from His many blessings. As God brought Flip from darkness to light and from despair to hope, He can and will do the same for all who ask and permit Him.