What are You Preparing For?
So many of us are ready to return to “normal”. We’re ready to return to work, ready to return to extra-curricular activities, ready to return to the gym, ready to return to the church building, ready to return to retail stores, restaurants, traveling; whatever it is that we deemed to be “normal” prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
What if the normal that we are so thirsty to return to doesn’t exist? What if like Lot’s wife in Genesis 19, we are eager to return to a life that is contrary to the will of God for our lives and we are not far from destruction? What if what we deemed to be productive and fruitful was actually unproductive and unfruitful to our eternal fate? Lot’s wife did not die because she wasn’t moving on; she was actually running for her life. Lot’s wife died because God instructed her not to look back; she longed to go back to a life that would ultimately end in eternal death; for the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 6:23).
What if we are missing what God is doing in this season? In Isaiah 43:19 (NKJ) God says, “Behold, I will do a new thing, now it shall spring forth; Shall you not know it? I will even make a road in the wilderness and rivers in the desert”.
Don’t think it strange that we are experiencing a global pandemic! This is not just happening in our neighborhood; but this pandemic is global. God is speaking! No, God did not cause this spirit of sickness and death to come upon the Earth, but He is using it to get our attention and to turn it for our good if we can perceive it! In Matthew 13, the disciples asked Jesus why he spoke in parables and Jesus responded, “This is why I speak to them in parables: though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand. In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: ‘You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. For this people’s heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.’”
It is so easy to get caught up in the cares of this world and to forget that we are strangers passing through this earth: and our days on the earth are as a shadow (1 Chronicles 29:15). Instead of preparing to return to an unfruitful life (a life lived apart from God; speaking to the saved and unsaved), let us prepare for eternity. There is no life apart from God. It is in Him that we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28).
Daily we make choices and decisions without consulting God. We go about our daily lives as if God is just an after-thought (we tap in when it is convenient for us). When we accepted Jesus Christ in our lives we accepted Him as Savior, but did we accept Him as Lord (the head, the ruler, the boss)? Is He Lord over our lives? Is He Lord over our finances? Is He Lord over our families? Is he Lord over our hearts and Lord over our actions? We can be saved by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8) but do we have faith to allow Jesus to be Lord?
Contrary to popular belief, there is life after death; it is our choice where we choose to experience it. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17).