Fearlessly Courageous
Desk of Dennis Piller
5/5/2021
I’m not thinking today…I’m Remembering!
Do you ever do that? Just stop…get quiet… and remember? For me, it typically happens when I have lost someone close to me. I remember as I am faced with my own mortality. A closer than normal look at what it has all meant. What have I done with these seven score years? I guess every man wants to know if his life was worth it. Or did he waste it?
I heard a story of an elderly man who went to church, always sitting in the last pew, and never showed any indication that he was saved other than he took up that space. One night at the end of the altar call he came and sat on the front pew…sobbing…asking forgiveness…crying out for God to save him. But he kept saying something else…I waisted it… I wasted my life…I can’t believe how “I have wasted my life” and he continued to gather the gravity of those 5 words.
That is too difficult a confession for most people, men or women.
To say in your later years… I have wasted my life!
Man by nature is at the head of his class when it comes to justification. We have all the reasons why we couldn’t do something. We honestly believe that over the years of time that we did something good; Like being a spouse, or raising children, occasionally going to church and helping a few people along the way… qualifies us and offsets all the other selfish things we did for us.
When God says, you must be born of the spirit…reborn… and to love the Lord thy God with thy whole mind, soul, and heart with the result of that being the clear and evident fruit that he alone is the ONLY Lord of your life.
Is there clear evidence he was first?
Today I look back. GUILTY AS CHARGED. I pause to remember the great times I have had with God. With Jesus. In the midst of serving myself, I remember God…showing up at the 12th hour, time and time again to my rescue. I remember the peace that came when all inside me was yelling at the top of my lungs. I remember the countless little answers he gave me. The seemingly endless coincidences that blessed my life, so much I can only remember a few. Although to my shame, I know that I know there were ten thousand more. But I was too self-absorbed. Too busy to acknowledge God’s providence, mercy, and forgiveness seventy times seven hundred to infinity.
God’s goodness and attention showing up in ten thousand loving kisses, hugs, encouragements from a hundred different sources, bits of faith, peace, courage, and strength when there was not one naturally to be had. God arrived and said through his outreached arms… I will never leave or forsake you… I can never stop giving to you… calling for you… waiting for you with open arms…crying a Father’s cry, it is never too late…I am never too far away…
IT IS NEVER TOO LATE TO COME HOME!
What are you remembering today? What are you loving today? What are you giving today? And why isn’t God first on that recipient list? What could possibly be more important…more significant…more majestic and eternal than the Lord of Host… Jesus Christ?
Your discovery of Christ, at whatever age… is the time appointed for you.
He knew you when. He knew the day you would come home. He awaits with a royal robe and rings for your finger as he waits at the top of the rise…
crying that you have finally come. Rejoicing that you made it before it was too late. You Remembered His voice…His callings…you finally got it. All of it.
Waisted? What 10 years?. 20? 50 years? What is that in the light of eternity? His love is the promise of all eternity…His forgiveness goes back before you were born…even then, he knew you by name. He knew the crooked path you would walk to finally come to the day of remembering His call. God’s name. God’s goodness and mercy through His son Jesus Christ Our Lord.
What will you choose to remember today? Your life forward cannot be found looking in a mirror. You will have to look much deeper and much higher, as you open up to the revelation of His Holy Spirit.
Don’t think of the things you didn’t get after praying, think of the countless blessings God gave you without asking!
Now that something to remember!
Deuteronomy 8:2 And you shall remember the whole way that the LORD your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep his commandments or not.
James 1:17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
Deuteronomy 7:13 He will love you, bless you, and multiply you. He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, your grain and your wine and your oil, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock, in the land that he swore to your fathers to give you.
Loren Daigle Rescue
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYR0xP1j4PY
