Some people are indecisive by nature, but I’m generally not one of those people. In fact, I tend to be overly opinionated. Ask me about anything, and I’ll probably have an opinion about it.
However, sometimes I can be indecisive. This usually involves figuring out what to order at a restaurant. What to order for lunch isn’t a life-altering decision. But there are other decisions that are very important, like choosing a career or deciding whom you’re going to marry.
And the biggest decision of all is what you do with Jesus Christ. There’s no more important decision than this one.
In John’s gospel, we find the story of an indecisive man, someone who let others do his thinking for him. He tried to appease a bloodthirsty, fickle crowd and his own troubled conscience. His name was Pontius Pilate.
He was like the soldier in the Civil War who couldn’t decide which side he wanted to fight for. He put on the coat of the Union Army and the pants of the Confederate Army, and both sides ended up shooting at him. That is what happens to the person who lives in indecision.
Pontius Pilate was the consummate politician. He tried to find the middle ground and make everyone happy. As a result, he made the worst imaginable decision—a decision that he no doubt regretted for the rest of his life.
Here was the question that was brought to him (and is eventually brought to every one of us): What are you going to do with Jesus?
Ultimately when we stand before God, it won’t be a sin question; it will be a Son question. It won’t be a question of whether you lived a good life or your good deeds outweighed your bad ones. It’s all about Jesus Christ, who is God's provision for us to get into Heaven.
Some people falsely envision God as someone who’s eagerly waiting in Heaven to bring judgment on Earth. But the Bible teaches something different. It tells us that God “is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9 NKJV).
However, there are people today who say, “Where is the return of the Lord? Haven’t you Christians been talking about that for some time now? Didn’t you believe the Lord was coming back years ago?”
I’m not ashamed to admit that I did. If you were to walk up to me in 1970 when I was a young kid, newly converted, and ask me if I believed that Jesus Christ was coming back soon, I would have said yes.
So am I disappointed that He hasn’t returned? My answer is no. I still believe that He’s coming back soon. The Bible says that “a day is like a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years is like a day” (2 Peter 3:8 NLT).
I thank God that He didn’t come back five decades ago. I would have enjoyed it then, of course, but there would have been significantly fewer people in the Kingdom. So I’m rejoicing in what God is doing, and I feel privileged to be a part of it.
But I also know there’s coming a day when the last person will come to faith in Christ. It is my belief that God is waiting for someone, somewhere out in this world, to believe in Him (see Romans 11:25). And once that person comes into the Kingdom, the Lord will rapture the church.
So God is not late. He’s right on time. And at the appointed hour, He will return. Until that day, we should walk with Him.
No comments:
Post a Comment