This really challenged me...
Imagine there is a bank that credits your account each morning with $86,400. It carries over no balance from day to day—every evening it erases whatever part of the balance you failed to use during the day. What would you do? Draw out every cent, of course.
Each of us has such a bank. Its name is “time.” Every morning it credits you with 86,400 seconds and every night it writes off as lost whatever portion of this you have failed to invest to good purpose. It carries over no balance; it allows no overdrafts. Each day it opens a new account for you; each night it burns the remains of the day. If you fail to use the day’s deposits, the loss is yours. There is no going back, no drawing against the “tomorrow.” You must live in the present on today’s deposits. Invest it so as to get from it the utmost in God’s will. The clock is running; make the most of today.
To realize the value of one year, ask the student who failed a grade; one month, ask the mother who gave birth to a premature baby; one week, ask the editor of a weekly newspaper; one hour, ask the lovers who are waiting to meet; one minute, ask the person who just missed a train; one second, ask the person who just avoided an accident; one millisecond, ask the silver medal winner in the Olympics.
In the following letter from an atheist, even he can see how the Christian should best spend his time:
You are really convinced that you’ve got all the answers. You’ve really got yourself tricked into believing that you’re 100% right. Well, let me tell you just one thing. Do you consider yourself to be com- passionate of other humans? If you’re right about God, as you say you are, and you believe that, then how can you sleep at night? When you speak with me, you are speaking with someone who you believe is walking directly into eternal damnation, into an endless onslaught of horrendous pain, which your “loving” god created, yet you stand by and do nothing. If you believed one bit that thousands every day were falling into an eternal and unchangeable fate, you should be running the streets mad with rage at their blindness. That’s equivalent to standing on a street corner and watching every person that passes you walk blindly directly into the path of a bus and die, yet you stand idly by and do nothing. You’re just twiddling your thumbs, happy in the knowledge that one day that “walk” signal will shine your way across the road. Think about it. Imagine the horrors hell must have in store if the Bible is true. You’re just going to allow that to happen and not care about saving anyone but yourself? If you’re right, then you’re an uncaring, unemotional and purely selfish (expletive) that has no right to talk about subjects such as love and caring.
Consider these probing questions about how you spend your time: Do you read you Bible every day without fail? Do you find time to eat food each day? Which comes first in your life—your Bible or your belly? Do you ever weep for the unsaved? Have you shared your faith verbally with more than 12 people in the last 12 months? Do you pray for laborers as Jesus commanded us to (see Luke 10:2)? If you were to be given $1,000 for every person you witnessed to, could you deal with your “fear of man” problem? Can you say that you love your neighbor as much as you love yourself? Have you made it a habit to always carry gospel tracts with you?
Yesterday is history, tomorrow a mystery. Today is a gift. That is why it is called the present. Be wise, and remember to “redeem the time, because the days are evil” (Ephesians 5:15).
--Excerpt from, School of Biblical Evangelism; Lesson 94, Our Most Valuable Commodity--
“Read and read again, and do not despair of help to understand the will and mind of God though you think they are fast locked up from you. Neither trouble your heads though you have not commentaries and exposition. Pray and read, read and pray; for a little from God is better than a great deal from men. Also, what is from men is uncertain, and is often lost and tumbled over by men; but what is from God is fixed as a nail in a sure place. There is nothing that so abides with us as what we receive from God; and the reason why the Christians in this day are at such a loss as to some things is that they are contented with what comes from men’s
mouths, without searching and kneeling before God to know of Him the truth of things.”
—John Bunyan
“She is a traitor to the Master who sent her if she is so beguiled by the beauties of taste and art as to forget that to ‘preach Christ . . . and Him crucified’ is the only object for which she exists among the sons of men. The business of the Church is salvation of souls.”
--CHARLES SPURGEON
No comments:
Post a Comment