Skip to main content

Making This Life Count

To truthfully "know" Jesus, His heart, His person, His character is to be drawn to love Him dearly - this I know with good confidence. That being said, it would seem likely to me that if that true connection is never made, then it's more likely true that one has never honestly known Him. Scripture tells us that one day every person who has ever lived will acknowledge Jesus as Lord - even His most ardent deniers,... but how many will truly know Him? How many will know the height and honor of His place in the heavenly realm and will have embraced the opportunity to know Him as friend?

"Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor and gave him the name above all other names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue declare that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Philippians 29-11 (NLT)

Everyone - even the dead will be raised to recognize Him at judgment day, but not every person will actually "know" Him or be acknowledged by Him as His friend. And the fate of those outside of that circle of His friends will be sealed on that day of His final judgment. Right now, many may find it easy to disrespectfully disregard Him or write Him off as "fantasy". But the day is coming and not far off when that so called fantasy will reveal Himself to them and that reality will bring sudden, everlasting and deepest regret to the memory of their every disrespecting thought about Him... but it'll be too late to know Him then.

It's a sad but true thought that to deny surrendering to God's call for relationship with Him is to deny the very purpose for one's own existence and life - having the opportunity to share relationship with us being His purpose in creating us in the first place. "Surrender" may be a hard word for stiff necked, hard hearts to swallow, but it's exactly what we must do in order to be called His. Human beings have become too proud and too far distanced from the simple truth, that though we've been given the freedom to make choices in this life, we've never been our own masters. 

As human beings, we've put enough history behind us since the dawn of creation and the events of God's interactions in the Old Testament to make forgetting God an easier thing to do... but He's never forgotten us. It's been His patience to allow those who will to come to Him to do so that has allowed the history of this life to linger, ... but that time is running out. And our opportunities to make this life count for something eternal are passing by as well.

So many human beings that God created with a desire to know and to be known by Him have wandered far away from Him - some without realizing that it was ever His heart's desire to share life with them personally. How far might we have strayed from His unchanging standards and how far from our first and foremost thoughts has He fallen? 

Does the word surrender immediately call up a resistant spirit? Even when used in reference to our surrender to the one who created us? Where do we stand in that most important relationship that spells out the only reason for our only purpose to be given life? Honest reflection and thoughts often have the ability to spell out the perils of the truth of our reality in the potential permanent state of our purpose. We either embrace it in complete surrender or we will die in denial of it.

Relationship with God - it's our only true task in life. So the single most important thing we can do in life - every moment, ... is to respond to God. And whether we realize it or not, we are responding to Him in what we say, do and even allow ourselves to think. And He knows it all. But if you're reading this and there are things in your life and past that stand as an offense in your response to God, it's not too late to make things right with Him while you still have breath. As the theologian Richard Sibbes once said truthfully, "There is more mercy in Christ than sin in us".

It's on our knees with honest, penitent and humbled hearts that we speak the most important messages of all of our lives before the God who gave us life... 

... He's listening.


"No, O people, the LORD has told you what is good, and this is what he requires of you: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God." Micah 6:8 (NLT)

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Real Power To Affect Change

I know that my position here may not be popular on it's face at first, but I think it could be most revealing of where some hearts are - even my own, by the response that it evokes... I think it's possible that we're all partly responsible for the chaos and darkness that is constantly swirling around in the digital tornado that is the constantly hammering news these days. While we may not have contributed to it directly by our own actions, it's a good bet that we may have contributed to it by our own inaction. Where does the true power to change things come from? And who is our best example to follow in this life? Now in the morning, having risen a long while before daylight, He went out and departed to a solitary place; and there He prayed." Mark 1:35 (NKJ) "Now it came to pass in those days that He went out to the mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God." Luke 6:12 (NKJ) "Then He spoke a parable to them, that men always ought ...

Judging, Judgment And Judge...

"I have come as a light to shine in this dark world, so that all who put their trust in me will no longer remain in the dark. I will not judge those who hear me but don’t obey me, for I have come to save the world and not to judge it. But all who reject me and my message will be judged on the day of judgment by the truth I have spoken. I don’t speak on my own authority. The Father who sent me has commanded me what to say and how to say it. And I know his commands lead to eternal life; so I say whatever the Father tells me to say.” John 12:46-50 (NLT) A lot is said these days about "judging", but in the midst of that popular societal buzz and the assertive comments that come with that conversation, I have a question: If God has called something sin and we simply agree with what He's said,... are we judging or just repeating and declaring the truth? When He walked the earth, Jesus spoke about judging and He pointed out the danger of our judging...  “Do not judge other...

An Observance And Observing True Reality...

As Easter approaches, I begin once again considering how our God sees our observance of an occasion as I always do and also what He might truly desire of us in observance above any of our trivial, man inspired traditions . What I come away with in firm conviction is the understanding that the most trivial of my sins, the least of my crimes against God, had the power to forever damn me in His judgment of me and send me into unending torment. And that knowing this one thing in truth and as reality, is key to my correct posture before God in honor of His purpose in the event. That key being the horror of knowing that the price of my very least sin was the shedding of my Christ Jesus' blood and His horrible suffering, because the reality of this brings the deep rending of my heart in awe and gratitude and it makes possible my true joy at the relief of my sentence because of what He has done. I believe this is a part of what God would desire from us in observance of Christ's death a...