An older movie came on two hours ago about a young high school football player
in a depressed town right here in Western Pennsylvania who is at odds with his overbearing coach and his dreams of
college seem to be over. I checked my iPhone and read the plot. At the very
end of the film the coach becomes more humane and enables the young player to go on
to college. I watched the film just to see the ending. Five minutes....five minutes to the end of the movie.... our cable went out! So I'm adding this preface to the following post. I think that you might see the slight correlation:
If I didn't have something to say in these posts that the reader is not going to hear somewhere else, or if I didn't say it in a way that one might not have heard it before, then I would have wasted the last almost eight years, for there is a multitudinous array of information sources available to most everyone. Well there you have it, sink or swim, either way I'm in the water.
There is a rather important misconception that I think most people operate under as it concerns one's consideration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I write this from decades of experience with older folks...of which I guess that I am now one myself. It does not appear that the older one gets the more amenable one is to acknowledging their lost condition or considering the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In fact, more often than not the opposite seems to be true..
There are few things as wonderful as an infant whose bright eyes follow anything that moves and can fixate on your own in a remarkably inquisitive stare....and also....the countenance of an elderly person who is secure in Jesus Christ and the knowledge that they will surely soon be welcomed into heaven after a long pilgrimage here on earth... but it appears that without Christ, and the older one gets, the more set in their ways they become.
Is it not true that many younger and even middle-aged people seem to know that someday something will have to be done concerning their questionable standing before God but relegate that confrontation to a time later in life? Maybe this is how you feel? There are problems in this planning with eternal consequences:
First of all you do not know how many more days you have left. This is thus gambling is it not? You are....gambling....that you have adequate time to pursue your dreams your way and then consider the claims of Jesus Christ later.
Second, there is no hint in God's Word that anything but immediate repentance is commanded. So....making the conscious decision to wait is an act of disobedience in itself and the conclusion of it all should not bode well to any reasonable mind.
Third, and the topic of this post, it may very well be that the longer one waits the harder one's heart becomes. This is what you are bargaining for. This is the gamble that multitudes take.
Try something that I find myself doing quite often....a celebrity of some sort comes on the television....an older celebrity.....maybe a Robert Redford or a Jack Nicholson...picture him as a robust young actor taking Hollywood by storm. The years have passed and they have had it all so to speak.. That's the bargain....you get the world but what comes later is a mystery....whereas a laborer in what would be the most servile of jobs....a common laborer with no fame or fortune but with a rock solid kinship with the King of Kings...is themself a king already....a king in the eyes of the Creator of this world, a laborer whose life now may be a mystery but whose eternal future is clear as the promises of God are true. There is a winner and a loser here. The gambler loses while the redeemed in Christ win.
Tomorrow is the Lord's Day. There is no more appropriate day to prostrate oneself before the Lord Jesus Christ in humble gratitude that one has not been called to account as of yet, and ask for the mercy of salvation promised to all that sincerely do so. There is no more acceptable time than the present. You have a Bible....everyone has a Bible....even atheists have Bibles. Open it to the Book of Psalms. Read the words in expectation that God has promised that if you seek Him...you will find Him. Ask Him for that which he has given freely to others who seem to think about nothing other than His majesty and glory. As for Monday...trust...it's not an easy road that you will embark upon but it is straight and flat with the most wonderful people as company, the most wise of guides, and the most powerful of defenders along the way.
If I didn't have something to say in these posts that the reader is not going to hear somewhere else, or if I didn't say it in a way that one might not have heard it before, then I would have wasted the last almost eight years, for there is a multitudinous array of information sources available to most everyone. Well there you have it, sink or swim, either way I'm in the water.
There is a rather important misconception that I think most people operate under as it concerns one's consideration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I write this from decades of experience with older folks...of which I guess that I am now one myself. It does not appear that the older one gets the more amenable one is to acknowledging their lost condition or considering the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In fact, more often than not the opposite seems to be true..
There are few things as wonderful as an infant whose bright eyes follow anything that moves and can fixate on your own in a remarkably inquisitive stare....and also....the countenance of an elderly person who is secure in Jesus Christ and the knowledge that they will surely soon be welcomed into heaven after a long pilgrimage here on earth... but it appears that without Christ, and the older one gets, the more set in their ways they become.
Is it not true that many younger and even middle-aged people seem to know that someday something will have to be done concerning their questionable standing before God but relegate that confrontation to a time later in life? Maybe this is how you feel? There are problems in this planning with eternal consequences:
First of all you do not know how many more days you have left. This is thus gambling is it not? You are....gambling....that you have adequate time to pursue your dreams your way and then consider the claims of Jesus Christ later.
Second, there is no hint in God's Word that anything but immediate repentance is commanded. So....making the conscious decision to wait is an act of disobedience in itself and the conclusion of it all should not bode well to any reasonable mind.
Third, and the topic of this post, it may very well be that the longer one waits the harder one's heart becomes. This is what you are bargaining for. This is the gamble that multitudes take.
Try something that I find myself doing quite often....a celebrity of some sort comes on the television....an older celebrity.....maybe a Robert Redford or a Jack Nicholson...picture him as a robust young actor taking Hollywood by storm. The years have passed and they have had it all so to speak.. That's the bargain....you get the world but what comes later is a mystery....whereas a laborer in what would be the most servile of jobs....a common laborer with no fame or fortune but with a rock solid kinship with the King of Kings...is themself a king already....a king in the eyes of the Creator of this world, a laborer whose life now may be a mystery but whose eternal future is clear as the promises of God are true. There is a winner and a loser here. The gambler loses while the redeemed in Christ win.
Tomorrow is the Lord's Day. There is no more appropriate day to prostrate oneself before the Lord Jesus Christ in humble gratitude that one has not been called to account as of yet, and ask for the mercy of salvation promised to all that sincerely do so. There is no more acceptable time than the present. You have a Bible....everyone has a Bible....even atheists have Bibles. Open it to the Book of Psalms. Read the words in expectation that God has promised that if you seek Him...you will find Him. Ask Him for that which he has given freely to others who seem to think about nothing other than His majesty and glory. As for Monday...trust...it's not an easy road that you will embark upon but it is straight and flat with the most wonderful people as company, the most wise of guides, and the most powerful of defenders along the way.
