Would you have been ready?

In most homes when someone is going out for the evening or leaving for work it is normal to hear someone shout 'are you ready yet'?

Preparing to go out or getting ready for various events in life is a major part of human activity. When two people fall in love and decide to get married then great preparation is made for the wedding day. Later on if they discover that they are expecting a baby there is equally as much planning that goes into the preparation for the arrival of the little one. Life is full of times of preparation. Often this is exciting and sometimes it makes life very hectic. 

As I consider the tragic events that took place in Manchester, England in the last week I wonder how many people who entered that arena were prepared for the end of their life. Please don't get me wrong I'm not trying to make mileage out of a sad event and I don't think that they shouldn't even have had to consider that life may have ended in such an awful way. But my question remains the same - how prepared was each individual, in that arena, to leave this world and enter the next. My heart breaks when I consider the age of the children that died. The tragedy of teenagers who had hardly begun to live and life was taking forcibly from them but the question remains the same – how prepared were they for this final step from this life to the next?

Please let me turn the question round and address it to you. Are you prepared for the next life? Do you understand that there is life on the other side of death? Do you realise that this life is about the preparation for the next?

There are a lot of other questions that sit alongside the ones that I have posed. Questions that might challenge some of the things that I have send! You might say that I'm making assumptions. Or you may deny the validity or the basis of the statements that I make. I would, with all due respect, ask you to read some of my other blog posts before passing judgement as they go into more detail about why I believe the Bible and the gospel of Jesus Christ to be the truth. 

I want to leave you with a couple of statements from the Bible and I want to request that you take time to consider them and reflect upon them. 

Proverbs 14:12

There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.

Proverbs 16:25

There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.

This statement is repeated twice by a man who is renowned to be the wisest man who ever lived. Basically he is saying that we think we know the truth, we think we know what is right but actually we get it wrong and our way ends in death. 

You are no doubt a very good person as measured against other people but we all are flawed and sinful and need salvation from a God who is holy and against whom we have sinned. 

Ecclesiastes 12:1

Remember now -- thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them;

This is a warning to young people to think about God early in life. You might be well beyond 'the days of your youth' but if it was important to think about God when young then it must be even more important and urgent as life progresses. God is concerned about all his creation, he hates evil, he will judge the perpetrators of evil but he does not pick and choose which sins he judges. He judges grosser sin more severely than lesser forms of sin. However that will not be much of a comfort when you are excluded from heaven, God's grace and all that our hearts desire. God will judge all sin and humanity fairly and justly.

Amos 4:12

Therefore thus will I do unto thee, O Israel: and because I will do this unto thee, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel.

This recommendation was made to a nation. They had sinned against God and were about to be judged by him. The advice of the prophet Amos was that they should prepare to meet God. The advice is just as significant for us today in the 21st-century. We need to be prepared for the day when we meet God. 

I am praying that God would give help in our country to reduce and control terrorism. I doubt that will ever eradicate it but I hope that we can minimise it and reduce the horrible events of Manchester being repeated elsewhere. 

But let us learn a lesson. A lesson that we would rather not learn. We need to be prepared for the unexpected, prepared for the end of life, prepared even though we might not be in the age bracket where we expect life to end. It could, and did and the tragedy is that many were most likely not prepared. 

The ultimate advice in the Bible is that we should believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved, Acts 16:31. Would you take that advice today.

Getting & Giving

There is a lot of pain and misery in our world today, especially in the Middle East where a power struggle is taking place in Iraq, Syria and Iran, where ISIS is trying to get control to enforce Sharia law and secure the oil revenues of those countries.

Russia is similarly getting control of parts of the Ukraine, the Crimea has yielded to insurgents, and other areas are being targeted to usurp authority and control natural gas supplies through the country. All these acts of war are leaving thousands of people dead, men, women and children falling to military powers of one persuasion or another, but each wanting to get something that they do not have by force. Some refugees will have nothing to go home to, their homes and livelihood has been decimated.

In many countries materialism is affecting many individual lives; this longing to have more possessions is sapping the quality of life in many households. In Western society the god, Mammon, has taken hold and lotteries, bingo and other forms of gambling encourage covetousness. Companies are encouraging their management teams to be more assertive, an aggression that holds no thought for the good of others but rather the promotion of self.

Jesus said in Mark 8.36 “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”

King Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes 5:13 “There is a sore evil which I have seen under the sun, namely, riches kept for the owners thereof to their hurt. But those riches perish by evil travail: and he begetteth a son, and there is nothing in his hand. As he came forth of his mother’s womb, naked shall he return to go as he came, and shall take nothing of his labour, which he may carry away in his hand. And this also is a sore evil, that in all points as he came, so shall he go: and what profit hath he that hath laboured for the wind?” 

Both texts ask the question what profit? and teach us that we brought nothing into the world and our hands will be empty when we leave the world. What is the point of being the richest man in the cemetery? And where will your soul be then?

Some Charities run television advertisements appealing to people to give two pounds a month to supply water to African villages, or to save children from malnutrition or being cruelly abused. Each appeal might touch the heart but not the pockets of ‘Joe public’. Sceptics say that these problems should not have money thrown at them but be resolved at their source by eliminating corruption, greed and selfishness.

Man’s giving is often measured and looks for something in return, but God’s giving exceeds anything and everything, He "so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son", to die on a cross for bankrupt sinners like you and me. 

Romans 8:31 reads like this , “What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?”  

Many people do not believe that God created this Earth and the systems that sustain life. Even the breath of air that you just took into your lungs was provided by God. You didn’t have to think about it yet there is enough for the billions of lives on this planet, but uniquely the same provision does seem to be in place for other planets. Physical life requires water and sunlight and God gives abundant supplies of each for earth dwellers, but not a drop on other planets, despite the fact that scientists and atheistic governments spend billions of dollars on space research looking for water to prove their doctrine that life evolved from water.

Jesus said in John 10, “But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you. My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.”  

Physical life involves the body, spiritual life relates to the soul and spirit. The spirit of an unbeliever is dead in trespasses and sins and needs to be born again in order to receive eternal life. Five times in the New Testament we read that Christ “gave himself”. The first one in Galatians 1:3 says, “Grace be to you and peace from God the Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ, Who gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, according to the will of God and our Father.” God the Father gave His Son, God the Son gave Himself, He died on the cross on account of our sins. 

In the next chapter Paul said in Galatians 2:20, “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” 

In 2 Corinthians 9:15 he said, “Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable gift.” Paul had great appreciation for being saved and to know his sins forgiven but there was something more, he received Christ Himself and the Holy Spirit.

When the rich man Zacchaeus got saved, Luke ch.19 says, “And Zacchaeus stood, and said unto the Lord; Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken any thing from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold. And Jesus said unto him, This day is salvation come to this house, forsomuch as he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.” 

Salvation changes lives and this tax collector’s life was changed and his perspective of getting and giving was changed too. He had a new heart and a new outlook on life. What he had, money could not buy, but faith obtained it freely by God’s grace. Romans 6:23 says, “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”  God bless.

This blog was written for FTMP by a Guest Blogger

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