Luke 9:25 (NLT)
And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but are yourself lost or destroyed?
“…But the fact is nothing should concern us more than our relationship with GOD; its about eternity, and nothing compares to that.” (page 96)
While I hate to keep harping on the same things, my conviction will not relent until we get it. That this life ultimately doesn’t matter. It’s the next one which resonates for eternity.
This whole discussion reminds me of a conversation I had while sitting in John’s (the Pastor not the Baptist) office. He shared with me a story about Martin Luther (of Protestant Reformation fame). Many in Luther’s congregation had grown weary of hearing him preach the plain, simple Gospel week after week. And told him so. In what must have been an awkward moment, he turned to them and replied, “When you start living out the plain, simple Gospel, I’ll move on to preach about something else.”
This topic- of focusing too much on this corporeal world- continues to grab our attention because we haven’t gotten “it” yet. We still get deceived into believing that we need this or that thing, we must spend every minute of our time making ourselves more comfortable, we must find any (and every) distraction possible to the fill the void. Despite our understanding of this and John’s repeated messages and these persistent devotions and God’s relentless reminders, we still go in circles.
One thing is certain. One day we will fall on our faces before the Living GOD. And we will have to give an accounting. And on that day, we don’t want to explain to GOD that he only got our leftovers. An hour on Sunday and Wednesday. Five minutes a day to read the devotion. A ten second prayer before a meal.
There’s this saying we have in education: “Begin with the end in mind.” May that become an anthem we display. (And then, we can quit talking about it all the time.)
Author’s Note: for more on this topic, read pages 96-98 of Crazy Love by Francis Chan and Danae Yankoski
