TODAY’S SIGNATURE VERSE ••• For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 ESV)
PRAISE & PRAYER PROMPT ••• Valentine’s Day is over, but I want you to think about this… when did you first see the Valentine displays of candy and cards in the stores? I saw the first one on December 21st (I posted a picture on Facebook).
What’s the next candy-oriented holiday? There may be a few green nods to St. Patrick’s Day, but the next major round of candy will be Easter-related. (On a side-note, yellow chick-shaped Peeps are the greatest candy ever made. This is a non-negotiable statement of fact that I refuse to debate.)
After Easter, we have a bit of a candy-break until Halloween. Probably because no one would sit a bowl of Fourth of July chocolates out for the picnic and expect them to survive the heat…
Nonetheless, Easter candy has already made its debut in stores… and I expect we’ll start seeing Halloween candy in August… just a month after Christmas trees show up in Hobby Lobby. I think we can all agree to thank our retailers for planning that far ahead. After all, we know that Christmas tree shopping in July is simply good common sense!
All this to set the stage for an illustration… we expect our retailers to plan ahead for what’s coming. In busy offices around the world, marketing professionals study calendars and make plans because they know Valentine’s Day is coming! Easter will be here soon! The supply and demand of July Christmas trees is real, people!
So if they are planning for what’s coming, why aren’t we?
We tend to think we have all this time. An endless supply of it that is promised to us. We can’t go to church this week because it’s our one day to sleep in. We don’t pray because today is too busy—we’ll do it tomorrow. We’ll read God’s Word next year because we couldn’t possibly start a Bible-in-Year plan if it’s not January 1st, right?! And we hold off living for God today because we don’t want to give up what we want for what He might ask from us tomorrow.
We have a lesson to learn from retailers. While they have some specific dates to work around, we have God’s Word and the Bible says Jesus is returning. 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 says, “For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.”
Let’s think like a retailer. Let’s go ahead and go to church. Pray. Read the Bible. And most of all, agree that God can do more with our lives than we can if we will just give it to Him now, rather than later.
Today, as you pray, thank Jesus for the promise of His return. Ask the Holy Spirit to help you be prepared now, rather than assuming you’ll have time later.
SHARING ••• Please feel free to comment or share this blog with others. Also, download a free Bible-In-A-Year Reading Plan when you subscribe to www.MyGraceFullLife.com! ***Unless noted otherwise, all Scripture references are from the ESV translation.
