By Sandy Jones
Happy New Year!
There’s just something refreshingly empowering about a new year. January 1. So many people see this as the proverbial “first day of the rest of your life.”
Many have followed what Scripture tells us to do and have invited Jesus into our hearts; and then for many of us, we talk about how excited we are to go to heaven when we pass from this earth.
If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you profess your faith and are saved (Romans 10:9-10 NIV).
What if I were to propose that the day you invite Jesus into your heart is your Day One instead? That that day is truly the first day of the rest of your eternal life. Would that statement challenge you to look at living out the rest of your life differently? It did me.
As a young mom I remember too often thinking, “I’ll do this differently next time with the boys,” until the ‘next times’ became fewer and fewer as they grew up, and their interests and level of maturity changed. In my own immaturity I thought life gave you do-overs for everything. Until one day I woke up to realize that the boys didn’t want to play Candyland or Chutes and Ladders any more. They’d moved on to games that required more skill and intellect, until they eventually moved on to the all-encompassing video games.
First I told myself that next time I’d slow down and take more time, or play more often. By the time it came to video games I told myself that “someday” I’d have the time to figure those games out, so that I could play with them without slowing them down or frustrating the daylights out of them.
And before I knew it they were graduating high school, moving forward as young men with their own lives. As a mother I was proud of them and the choices they were making, although I looked back longingly wishing I’d realized much earlier in my own life that there’s not always a chance to do-over.
This pattern was one I repeated in so many areas of my life, including my walk with The Lord. As a girl, and even a teen, I told myself I’d grow to “know” Him. Like I was going to absorb knowledge of Jesus by osmosis. Then I told myself that “when I had time” I’d do Bible study, and figure it all out.
It wasn’t until my 34th year, when my sweet Steve boldly told me, one month before we were to be married, that it was time for us to get back to church, and get our lives fully on the right track.
He was raised Lutheran, and I had primarily attended Baptist churches – so our church experiences were vastly different. With both of us unwilling to compromise to the other’s “religion,” we knew that we had to find “our own way.” We decided we needed to go “church shopping,” promising ourselves that we wouldn’t get complacent and with me digging in my heels and reminding Steve that I’m a social butterfly, so if we were going to do this, we couldn’t make friends there for a while. I was determined that if we were going to do this, then I was going to finally learn what I’d professed to believe since I accepted Jesus into my heart when I was 7 years old at Vacation Bible School.
That is exactly what we did, too. We found a wonderful Bible believing, Bible teaching church. We jumped in, fully dedicated to our mission. Steve and Sandy’s self-guided tour, if you will. We attended church every Sunday morning. There was no Google yet, so we did our research the old-fashioned way. Digging deeper into each week’s message, while reading the Bible daily, until we felt that we understood the lesson, so that we would then be ready for the next Sunday.
Then the church we had joined brought in a new young worship leader. A young man who clearly loved The Lord, and studied Him on a much deeper level than we had. He introduced worship songs that called God different names, such as Jehovah Jireh. All new things to research. Who was Jehovah Jireh? Who was Emmanuel? Who was Adonai? Who were all these people? For a while we even questioned if we’d stumbled into a cult. LOTS of research. Three years of digging deep, while mostly staying to ourselves in spite of the numerous invitations we received to lunches, or home groups, or any number of ways to make friends – with me fearing that I would lose my intensity, that I would stop thirsting for The Truth, always looking forward to the hope and promise of spending eternity with Jesus, the Son of the Living God.
Then came my husband’s cancer diagnosis. His time in Vietnam decades before had exposed him to the dreadful Agent Orange, and we got the news that he has an incurable form of lung cancer. Suddenly “eternity” seemed so much closer than we had anticipated.
One day while driving through traffic I was listening to a pastor on the radio; okay, I was probably only half listening because looking back I can’t even recall who the pastor was. But at that moment in my life, what he said suddenly made perfect sense, and looking back it seems so obvious – how could I have missed this for most of the last 30 years? He pointed out that at the moment you invite Jesus into your heart you become a member of His family. That your “eternity” begins that day. That moment. That is your Day One! We have no need to wait to pass on from our earthly bodies to start living our eternity with Jesus – we already are!
As we go into this New Year, a year full of promise, with opportunity ripe for the picking, if you don’t already know Jesus as your Lord and Savior, please don’t make the same mistakes I made so much of my life. Don’t wait for more time, or the right amount of knowledge. Rest in the fact that He’s waiting to take that first step with you – your own personal Day One!
There are many wonderful Bible believing, Bible teaching churches that can help to lead you to The Lord, or you are more than welcome to call our Prayer Line listed on page 3 of each issue, or reach out to us. To quote an old adage, life is short, but eternity is forever – why not start today?
Until next time…
God Bless
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