Happy New Year! I’m glad to see 2015 end. It was a year of extreme trials and tribulation for my family and me, and I can assure you that it was no fun. I look forward to a better year in 2016, but there are no guarantees that it will not be full of trouble too, or that I will even live through it.
The Bible gives at least three verses to think about in this regard:
“Man born of woman is of few days and full of trouble. He springs up like a flower and withers away; like a fleeting shadow, he does not endure.” (Job 14:1)
My heart grew hot within me, and as I meditated, the fire burned; then I spoke with my tongue: “Show me, O LORD, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting my life is. You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man’s life is but a breath.” (Ps. 39:3)
What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. (James 4:14)
The first was written by Job and deals primarily with life being full of trouble; Lord knows he had more than his share. The second set of verses was written by David as a result of his being pursued by his own son who was intent on killing him; and the last were by James, half-brother to Jesus, who had refused to accept Jesus as the Messiah until after he saw him appear; all were written about 1000 years apart by men under vastly different circumstance. Job was being tested, David was being pursued by his own son, and James was living with the fact that he had rejected Jesus as the Messiah until He rose again and appeared to him.
So our lives are frail and full of trouble and God points our condition out to us time and again.
Why?
Because we were born to sin. We inherited it and each generation has engaged in it right down through the ages until today. Death and trouble came from sin. So God emphasizes that sin is the big problem facing all of humanity and Jesus is the solution; however He makes it explicitly clear that there is only limited time available to any of us in regards to doing something about our sin before time runs out. It is an urgent matter that is often treated with indifference by a distracted and disengaged world so similar to those living in the days of Noah.
The urgency is that we each need to make a decision to receive Christ in our lives and there is not an unlimited amount of time in which to act. Receiving Christ means Jesus paid the price for our sins which leads to eternal life in paradise and rejection of His sacrifice for our sins leads to electing to take the punishment for our sins alone, which necessitates being forever damned.
If we receive Christ then we must follow Him and not the world. We should feel urgency, because God tells us to. We should share the desire of Jesus in that no one should perish.
In 2016 I am going to do my utmost to reach as many for Christ as I can. I feel the sense of urgency in time running out for me and a lost world, and if course in the Lord returning and dealing a final blow to satan and his minions. Noah preached 120 years without a single convert outside his family. Today there are lost souls receptive to receiving the Gospel all over the world. Noah would be envious at this opportunity. What an honor and privilege to plant the seeds that will take root and blossom to perfection in heaven. Make 2016 your year before your mist burns off like the morning fog.
Enjoy your day with your families and please go to Honey Lake Church or somewhere this Sunday.
2 Peter 3:10
But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed. Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.
January 1, 2016 – Click here to listen