THURDAY March 20th
I wonder if you have ever gone into a task without preparing for it and wished afterward that you had. I have and I lived with regret.
Well, we have seen that God has everything worked out, he has prepared all things before the foundation of the world, he had the whole work of redemption planned and he has all of eternity planned for those who have come to love him and to accept Jesus. And we are reminded by some verses in the book of Job that ‘no purpose of God can be thwarted’. (42:2) What he has prepared stands for eternity.
I want to ask the question today and it fits in with a lot of what I have already shared on this word ‘prepare’ and of ‘being prepared’, are you truly preparing for eternity? Am I?
Too often we seem to live today as if eternity doesn’t matter. We live to satisfy ourselves in the here and know, without as I have mentioned previously keeping to the forefront of our minds that we will one day have to give an account of ourselves before God.
I have just mentioned Job, and he says this in 19:25-27
‘For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me!’
It is very personal, notice how Job uses ‘I’, three times. ‘I know’, ‘I shall’, ‘I shall’.
‘I know that my Redeemer lives’, ‘I shall see God’, ‘I shall see for myself’, and it causes him to say, ‘My heart faints within me’. He is overwhelmed with the wonder of one day standing before God, and I ask us (myself included) today as I write and as you read this devotion are you overwhelmed with the wonder that one day we also will see God and stand in his presence.
If we are, it would cause us to truly live our lives not for the temporal but for that which is eternal, knowing that when that day arrives, we will have to give an account of ourselves. Let’s give more time toward preparing for the future, for eternity so that when that moment comes, we will not be filled with regret.