Yes, Lord

The most important words I ever said. And blessings poured into my life day by day, year by year from His bounty without measure, often unnoticed, always at the best time and never too late, regardless of how impatiently I waited, as I gradually learned saying yes saves a lot of heartache and wasted effort.             God blessed me with a memory equipped to recall many decades of situations which could have been crushing and seemed to hover far too long for comfort and although unseen then, cleared the way for more blessings. Perhaps not a solution I desired at the time, but often now I can see the delicacy of His loving hand adjusting bits of my life, perhaps taking away some bits I’m better off without, or the occasional ‘pop quiz’ just to prove I’m listening, as He taught me I can trust Him. Completely. All the time. Always.             Time and distance often help us to understand God’s planning—not always though. Sometimes, reminding us He’s King, Master, Father, He does not explain. (His world, His rules.) Remembering and enjoying beauty and love in all the good things I know about Him, I can accept that I have no right to demand answers. I just remind myself to say daily “Yes, Lord”. I trust in what I know about Him; I can trust the unknown to His loving, all-powerful hand.             Anytime I tried to handle trouble by myself, bitterness took root. Yet seen from a great distance, no anger or bitterness remains from the past, all seen through eyes filled with His love. The only sadness I feel is regret over how slowly I grew as I gradually, so painfully slowly, and the opportunities I missed along the way.             I’ve had my ‘last word’; I pray whenever you reach your last brief time in this world, you can look back at a lifetime filled with God’s blessings.

On the Rarity of Boldness

      

          I remember when I was a small child in church that a preacher often got so excited, so filled with passion, that his voice rose to a shout as he paced back and forth with such urgency in his voice, such emotion, that even so small a creature as I could not ignore what he was saying. In fact one preacher (J.. Frank Norris, a local fire-and-brimstone preacher in the 1920s-1930s, whose church grew to fill a city block ) inspired such emotion in my own father that his strong feelings led to rebellion and he rose mid-service, grabbed my hand and dragged Mother and me out of that church, never to return. 
            My dad rebelled at hearing the fate of a sinner described so vividly and darkly. His view of God was purely love toward mankind. So far as I know, Daddy stayed away from church services for the next decade. Years later, he said he couldn’t sit and listen to someone talk about a God who said He loved us and yet condemn sinners to such an eternal, infernal fate. Yet Jesus spoke of Hell three times as often as He did Heaven. If God the Father is real, so is God the Judge, who will sentence any who refuse to accept His pardon, given at the expense of the Perfect One, who sacrificed Himself, accepting the death penalty our sin requires. Both Heaven and Hell are real or Jesus was not who He said He was and there is no Heaven, indeed no God! 
            I wonder whether as time went on many pastors, seeking popularity perhaps, had trouble explaining away this truth and began to avoid this aspect of God and rather began to emphasize in their teaching discipleship, a form of self-improvement intended to bring us closer to a loving Father.  Even while telling us we were saved by God’s grace through faith He planted in our hearts, I wonder if we listeners hear only that we need to improve to enter Heaven, not hearing the part about no one ever becoming good enough without Jesus paying our penalty. 
           We often seem to think of Holy God as dispenser of Good things, a doting Grandfather and less often remember He is a Judge who hates any sin (He doesn't grade on the curve) and who dispenses final judgment. One day His patience will end and His invitation will be withheld, Heaven's gate will be shut, leaving us to our choice: an eternal future without Him and an eternal penalty to repent, without hope. 
            A precious few preachers now seem to sense that time is short; there is a boldness in their message which demands our full attention. Self-improvement is not why God left us here in this sin-filled world—if we loved others as we do Him, we would be shouting about the dangers ahead for those who deny Him as Lord. This is not the time for timidity, tolerance of evil around us.
            One has described our behavior as that of a surgeon who could heal our disease, but fears bad news would offend his patient, fails to offer the cure or even tell us there is a cure, and lets us limp forward with a prognosis of sure death. Yes, surgery is painful, but better than the alternate. Or a fireman sitting in the firehouse, ignoring the blaring alarm which signals imminent death for some unknowing victim, or a highway repairman failing to signal a collapsed bridge ahead. 
            The one thing we can do today which cannot be done after we leave this world behind is to share God's love and warning to those around us, whose coattails are already smoking.