Category: Culture

[There really are a lot of good reasons to do so.]

My son, who has now developed a clever sort of humor, will hijack someone’s sentence with a phrase that includes words like “whole,” “enough” or “entire.”  It usually goes something like this:

[Other child] “Dad how long will it take us to get to Trader Joe’s?”

[Son before Dad answers] “The whole time.”

[Other child] “Daaad!  Well, once we get there, how long will we stay there?”

[Son, again, before Dad answers] “The entire time.”

And so it goes.  Funny guy, right?

As I was looking at Baxter’s 18th reason for someone who does not believe in the Lord Jesus to do so, I thought of this: we only have a certain amount of time and once it’s finished, it’s finished.  We don’t have less than we need or more than we need.  We have the “whole” and “entire” time we need.

In the end, when our allotted time has expired (which it will do sooner or later), we cannot complain to God that we did not have enough time to consider the claims of Christ and turn to Him.

Here’s Baxter:

Consider also that God has given you no time to spare.  He has not lent you one day or hour more than is needful for the work that you have to do; therefore you have no reason to lose any by your delays.  Do you imagine that God would give a man an hour’s time for nothing?  Much less to abuse Him and serve His enemy?  No, let me tell you, that if you make your best of every hour, if you should never lose a moment of your lives, you would find all little enough for the work you have to do….What hearts have they, what lives do those men lead that think time long?

We are accustomed to (what we think is) the inevitability of tomorrow.  Few of us believe that tomorrow will be denied to us; so we think and act as if there are some decisions that we can put off until then.

Do you really think your eternity-in-the-balance is one of those?

The time is now to believe in Jesus Christ.

Pastor Gabe

“Slipping, slipping, into the future….”  You might know song?  Steve Miller band penned these words in their hit song, “Fly Like an Eagle.”  Anyone of some age looks back on his life and finds those moments when he should’ve, could’ve or would’ve…but didn’t.  Regret is inevitable for all of us since none has any knowledge of the future.  We do the best we can at the moment: assimilating all the facts, weighing the options and then making a decision.  This, or something like it, is our typical process based on our incomplete (or rather, no) knowledge of the future.

But, what if we knew?

Robert Heinlein told us the short story of Professor Pinero’s machine that predicted a person’s death date ahead of time: creepy stuff.  In all cases but one, no one knows.  Only hindsight is 20-20; to the rest of it, we are utterly blind.  For most of our lives, this is a tension we live with; we have to.  There is one future event common to all mankind known to all mankind for which we can prepare: The Judgment.  Richard Baxter gives us reason #17 why none should delay to put down their trifles for eternal glory:

Consider, that your very time which you lose by these delays [in coming to Jesus Christ], is an inconceivable loss.  When time is gone, what would you then give for one of those years, or days, or hours, which you now foolishly trifle away?  O wretched sinners, are there so many thousand souls in hell that would give a world, if they had it, for one of your days; and yet can you afford to throw them away in worldliness and sensuality, loitering delays?  I tell you, time is better worth than all the wealth and honors of the world.  The day is coming when you will value time: when it is gone you will know what a blessing you made light of.

A great coup is at the same time a great tragedy: that one might waste his time all his time and miss his eternal blessed time spending it instead in perpetual just punishment.  In the end, there are only two kinds of people: the prepared and the unprepared.  Which one are you?

Delays are inevitable.  Travelers know too well what it’s like to arrive in time at the airport, sail through ticketing and then get slammed at the TSA line!  Or, you have a project assigned to you that requires a team of people who each have parts on the critical path and one person just can’t seem to deliver so…BOOM!  Delay.

This is all understandable.  But, what keeps you from turning to God?  What keeps you from putting your life in the hands of Jesus Christ?  Why would you delay at doing that?

Richard Baxter warns what may happen should you choose to wait to believe instead of just believing:

Do but consider, what will become of you if you be found in these delays?  You are then lost, body and soul forever.  Now if you had but hearts to know what is good for you the worst of you might be converted and saved; for God does freely offer you his grace.  But if you die in your delays, in the twinkling of an eye you will find yourselves utterly undone forever.

People don’t talk like that about hardly anything!  That’s normally because results from our typical delays do subside.  Consequences exhaust themselves and eventually give way to distant memories.

Delaying to agree with God that sin makes us condemned and then turning to Him who freely offers pardon means at some point, the end result will never end.

Do not delay in coming to Christ.  None has ever been turned away who has.

Pastor Gabe