Category: Bible

What if you did something today that jeopardized tomorrow?  Would you do it?

“Maybe”?  Americans are masterful at cost-benefit analysis and so surely there are some among us who would judge today’s benefit to be worth tomorrow’s jeopardy.  In small things living in the effect of yesterday’s gambles causes little discomfort – some, but it’s manageable.  There are those times of great regret, however.  We judged something to be “essential” or “must have” or “entitlement” and we went for it!  Age and the pains of life taught us we were stupid.

Are you spiritually stupid?

Are you willing to risk a little more of self-centered living today believing that tomorrow you’ll take a Tylenol and the headache will go away?  Or, that God will suffer another day of being put off (“He’s patient and loving”)?  But what if tonight your soul will be required of you?  What if you open your eyes and find yourself in a cold, alone-place devoid of sound, heat or the brightness of light?  What if the only furniture in that landscape is a judgment seat directly in front of you?  Is today’s folly worth that risk?

Don’t be stupid.  You know the darkness in your own soul – you live to fill it every day.  And every day you spend your time and energy believing that it’s filled.  But then you wake in the morning and it’s empty.  Again…

Is your everlasting happiness a matter to be willfully hazarded by causeless and unreasonable delays?  If you delay today you are utterly uncertain of living till tomorrow.  If you put by this one motion you know not whether ever you may have another.  You know not whether ever the Spirit of God will put another thought of turning into your hearts or at least whether he will incline you hearts to turn.

Why don’t you turn to Jesus Christ in humility and with hope?  Do you think He will turn away from you?  He will certainly not.

Pastor Gabe

I live in a growing Southern city.  I don’t know when the South was given its nickname, “The Bible Belt” but I think that I live in its buckle.  In fact, in the (online) Yellow Pages for my city, there are 1199 listings for churches.  (That’s one church for every 667 people.)

Beyond that, no one can open up an internet browser and type in any religious word and lack options.  Blogs?  Podcasts?  Radio?  On-line booksellers?  There are even Christian books on the New York Times Bestseller list (which, by the way, is not a good reason to buy them)!

In my city and in our culture, if you don’t want to see a church, don’t want to read something religious, want to ignore Christian radio, avoid looking at Christian books at Barnes and Nobles or ignore someone saying “Bless you!” when you sneeze, you have to work very hard.  As a pastor looking at how Christianized parts of our culture have become, I can be nauseated; this saturation has watered down things (that’s a subject for later).  At the same time, the proliferation of the Christian message all around us gives anyone who listens manifold opportunities to find his way into the presence of the God who loves and redeems.

Richard Baxter saw similar things in his time and said this:

You have such times of advantage and encouragement as few ages of the world have ever seen and few nations on earth enjoy at this day.  What plain and plentiful teaching have you!  What abundance of good examples and the society of the godly!  Private and public helps are common. Seldom has the church seen such days on earth.  And yet is not the way of heaven fair enough for you?   Yet you are not ready to turn to God?  Will you delay till harvest time be over and the winter of persecution come again?

He writes in 17th century England!  What would he say to the tremendous opportunities and advantages present to people these days?!  My friend, you have no reason to claim you lack resources.  Turn to Christ now in trust and follow Him into eternal heaven.

Pastor Gabe

“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”  We’ve all heard that and none of us with any age believes it.  It’s a rabble-rousing adage the young toss around to each other to confirm themselves in their youthful ignorance…Or is it?  Most common sense wisdom like this has roots in truth – maybe not unassailable truth, but kernels of truth nonetheless.

I do have a dog and she’s not a pup.  I should test the theory to see if I can teach her something she doesn’t know.  Maybe, however, God made dogs hard-headed in their age to teach a point to their masters: some things are more easily learned and assimilated when we’re young.

I think we could probably tease out the truth of this.  Marriage is more easily fruitful and joyful when it is begun at a younger age (there are so many lessons to learn!  The young have the resiliency).  Parenting is also more fitfully begun and done at a young age (how many of us have seen bedraggled grandparents raising children?).  Military service is definitely for the young (believe me!).

It is also true that the young haven’t had the time to develop the hardness of heart that comes from the vicissitudes of life: hard knocks produce hard skin, to be sure.  Richard Baxter explains that age wars against willingness to submit to and follow Jesus Christ:

Age itself has many inconveniences and youth has many great advantages: and therefore it is folly to delay.  In age, understanding and memory grow dull and people grow incapable and almost unchangeable.  We see, by our every day’s experience that men think they should not change when they are old; that opinion or practice in which they have been brought up they think they should not then forsake.

Besides how unfit is age to be at that pains that youth can undergo?  How unfit to begin the holy warfare against the flesh, the world and the devil?  God’s way is to [en]list his soldiers as soon as may be when in youth; but the devil will persuade them that it is yet too soon; and when he can no longer persuade them that it is yet too soon, he will then persuade that it is too late.

What advantage has youth; they are not rooted and hardened in sin nor filled with prejudice and obstinacy against godliness, as others are.

Do you believe that as you accumulate life experience – hard life experience – that those lessons will more incline you to follow Christ?  I should think not.  Why, after you’ve endured those difficult experiences (in your mind without the help of God) would you then turn to Him?

Friend, it just doesn’t work that way.  Turn now and live.

Pastor Gabe