I suppose getting old is not for sissies especially when you have so many hard miles on your body and such a long list of bones that have been broken and shattered like I have. Today I am to receive a shot between the vertebrae in my spine, (an epidural). The bones comprising my spine are, according to my doc, “flopping around” which causes pain when I walk, (or for that matter when I sit or lay down).
Hopefully by tomorrow when I get on a plane I’ll be all fixed up for another few months. It is times like this that I wistfully look forward to a time when I will enter heaven and receive my glorified body. That won’t be a temporary fix like the constant epidurals that I have to keep enduring every few months, but a permanent fix, a body that stays forever young.
I was talking to a close friend whose dad passed away a week or so ago and he told me his dad had the same outlook on death as I do.
“How so?” I asked.
While he didn’t relish the thought of leaving his wife of over fifty years alone, he said that his dad’s faith was strong and he had no doubt that Jesus would personally greet him in heaven with loving arms and he very much looked forward to that day and “welcomed” it.
Hmmm . . . What’s not to like? No tears, sadness, anger, disappointments, regrets, sorrow, worry, death, sickness, angst, sin, and a new body that is perfect and far, far, away from aches and pains. It will be a glorious loving time with our Savior and a wonderful reunion with those saints that love God and have gone on before us. It is a place so wonderful that it is incomprehensible, “eye has not seen, nor has ear ever heard” the glory that we will experience.
A friend told me the other day to imagine a rope that went around the world countless times with a piece of one inch wide red tape around its beginning. He said the red tape represented our life on this earth. He said, “Sadly most of us concentrate our full attention on what we will do for the remaining 1/4” of red tape that we have left in this life, or even a half inch or more, but pay little attention to the boundlessness of miles of the next life that will never end.
What are you doing with your life today? Are you a red tape person and spending all of your time preparing for your retirement, and the good life complete with grandkids, or are you looking into eternity and the enormous effect that what you do with this life will have upon the next?
Is there a heaven or hell?
Where will you go when you die?
Will God let you into heaven?
Why?
You see hope is not just an empty dream, it is a reality. Heaven is for real and so is hell. We have ALL sinned, but God has provided a way for us to escape the ravages of it including old age, sickness, and death; a way that will allow us to remain forever young . . .
If you truly believe that statement, you will WANT to obey God and use your resources including talent, time, and treasure to accomplish His purpose. I don’t imagine God will allow us to have it both ways. If after analyzing my life I determined that all I seemed to want to do is spend all of my time in that little one inch of red tape thinking about this brief life, I would be seriously in doubt of my salvation.
This is not to say that we can enter heaven through works, we cannot; justification can only come through faith and grace. But it is to say that if we truly have faith and are deserving of God’s grace via what He did on the cross, our works would declare it to a lost world.
Ask yourself right now, “What good works do I have?”
Falling a little short? The good news is that it’s not too late. Start today – God is waiting for you to make your move!
Rev. 3:20
“Look! I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in . . . ”
October 27, 2014 – Click here to listen