“Remember Him before the door to life’s opportunities is closed and the sound of work fades. Now you rise at the first chirping of the birds, but then all their sounds will grow faint.” (Ecclesiastes 12:4 NLT)
Much of Ecclesiastes warns us of uncertainties and frightening outcomes in almost any situation, but in chapter 12 Solomon zeroes in on the risks involved in forgetting the Creator in our youth, finding ourselves in our old age without a firm spiritual footing.
There’s a real sense in which our lives aren’t built, they’re accumulated. As a young teen we dream of having the prettiest girl in school be our girlfriend, but what girl wants to date a loser who doesn’t have a nice car? But you need money to buy a car, so you pick up whatever part-time job you can find to scrape together enough for a downpayment on your dream car.
Finally, she says “yes” to a date, but one thing leads to another, and college goes out the window because now she’s pregnant. Marriage and parenting mean adequate housing, so part-time work now becomes full-time and on and on it goes until one day we look in the mirror and don’t recognize the old guy staring back. Life has moved so fast there’s been no time to give serious thought to God, and besides, what kind of God would want someone who’s made such a mess of their life?
The scenarios may look a little different, but our lives seem to move so fast, how would we ever have time for God? And here’s the truth: we never will unless and until we see how vitally connected the Lord is in the affairs of man. Charles Swindoll wrote: “We are all faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations.”
Life seems impossible, and it is, without the empowering presence of the living God walking with us. Jesus told us in John 15: “For apart from Me you can do nothing.” Most people try to do life void of any real, meaningful and intimate relationship with the Lord Jesus, largely because they’ve never been willing to listen to anyone who knows and loves Him. The baggage we accumulate weighs us down and causes us to lose hope in anything but our own weak efforts.
We find ourselves in what to us seems to be an impossible situation, never stopping to realize nothing is impossible with God! So, we get stuck in the mundane and repetitive when the Lord could set us free to fly higher than we ever dared dream possible. Because we train ourselves to look for the proverbial “bottom line”, we miss the miracle of new life because it doesn’t cost us anything. How can anything life-transforming be “free”?
Obviously, the price of our salvation is “free” to us, but it cost our Savior everything! Additionally, the gift of eternal life is costly to the one who pursues the Lord with abandon. As we learn new, godly disciplines required to grow in that relationship there comes a point where we’re willing to pay anything, make whatever sacrifice just to know Him better and to walk with Him more closely. Ultimately, there is no cost too great and anything and everything we are or possess is not too great a cost to pay to be more like Him. The greatest opportunity known to man is to walk in faithful harmony with King Jesus!
Do you know Him? Have you even given Him serious consideration? One day each of us – every human being who has ever lived or ever will live – will stand before the Lord Jesus to give an account of our life. The only thing that will matter on that day is that our sins are forgiven and our heart is filled with His presence. If you’re tired of running your own life and would like to know the Lord Jesus in a fullness of life that you’ve never dared imagine, please tap ANewStory.com and let Ron Hutchcraft walk you through a brief explanation of how you can have peace and contentment you’ve thought was impossible.
Food for thought.
Blessings, Ed 😊
