I Wish We'd All Been Ready
From today’s sermon found in Luke’s Gospel, chapter 17 verses 26-27, Pastor Roy’s title was “Are we ready?” Immediately, my mind rushes to Larry Norman and his early contemporary Christian song entitled, “I Wish We’d All Been Ready” (1969). The pastor went on to say that today, as in the days of Noah, there was fear and uncertainty everywhere. Just as God said in Noah’s day, after 120 years of warning, the rain started to fall!
The late Larry Norman.
Roy’s point and the point of my last blog entry are the same point: We must be ready.
The essence of Larry Norman’s song is a lament from after the fact that most of us were not ready to be caught up in the rapture, which meant most of humanity would not be ready to turn to Christ and receive salvation with forgiveness of their sins. I am convinced that my last blog’s call to preparation to be active agents of God’s grace in the post-election 2020 days of these United States and beyond is ultimately to prepare for something even greater, and that is for the physical return of Christ. My heart is that we, as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord of this Universe, should GET READY, BE READY AND STAY READY to be of complete availability and usefulness to our King.
Scripture speaks of this type of readiness as being ready at all times:
“Preach the Word: be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with all longsuffering and doctrine.” (II Timothy 4:2)
Sharing the Gospel is essential to being ready!
Remember, no human knows when the return of Christ will be, not even Christ Himself!
(Just to be sure about that statement, please re-read Matthew 24:36.)
In the parable of the Two Servants, Matthew 24, verses 44-46, the author writes, “ Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect. Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his master made ruler over his household, to give them food in due season? Blessed is that servant whom his master, when he comes, will find so doing.”
Again, my cry of readiness in my last blog is NOT intended for a temporary awakening. It was to sound the alarm for present and future readiness to be always about the Father’s business, especially in the arena of sharing the Gospel. In the aforementioned parable, one servant was utterly slack in his responsibilities while the other, upon his master’s return, was out in the fields, about his master’s business.
So, in the New Testament’s concentric circles of WHERE our spheres of readiness and responsibilities are, Acts 1:8 makes our fields of service quite clear. In this verse the word says:
“But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
To simplify, we can use this break down as a type of understanding:
Jerusalem = our hometown
Judea = our state
Samaria = our country
Ends of the earth = just that, the rest of our planet Earth
So, don’t sweat the small stuff! In whatever physical proximity you find yourself, you are in one of those concentric circles of Kingdom service! Clearly, you do not need to live overseas to be a missionary! A Christian missionary is one who takes the Good News of Christ’s salvific work on the cross, to all parts of this planet, a work that the Scriptures call the Great Commission, found in Matthew 28 verses 18-20.
Each believer who knows Christ personally through an authentic salvation experience is to engage the world by sharing the Gospel with all who will listen. This is the MISSION of Christ found all throughout the Scriptures: John 3:16, Luke 19:10, Hebrews 9:26, Romans 10:13, Ephesians 2: 8,9, I John 5:13, and so many other locations found in the Bible. God wants to use us all--every race, every individual who has devoted their hearts, minds, soul and spirit to the Lord of Lords, King Jesus!
My father was a soldier in three different conflicts, WWII, Korea and Vietnam. He received a Silver Star, a Bronze Star and 5 Purple Hearts. He jumped out of perfectly good planes! All my life he had his own axiom for readiness for his two boys, Mike and me. It went something like this:
“All right you two, stand up, hook up and check your equipment! When I stood there on that plane, I was ready to jump! I stood up, I hooked myself to the line, and I made a last minute check of ALL of my equipment was in order! When the green light came on, we were over our destination and the Jumpmaster would simply move us along with the words, “GO, GO, GO!”
When my best friend in North Carolina was dying of Lou Gehrig's Disease, his last place of residence was in a facility in Winston-Salem, NC. No longer able to share the Gospel with his voice, or with his Bible, he used the ONLY part of his body that could still communicate his precious story, the Gospel story. Terry Cason was hooked up to a computer that could type out words that were connected to a device that read his eye direction and typed out each particular letter and subsequently each particular word.
Instead of being withdrawn, angry and isolated, Terry took the time to share Christ with anyone who was interested in a manner no one would ever want to have to do!
Lastly, there was a brother named Philip in the Scriptures, who was FILLED with the Holy Spirit and is my go-to-guy as I pattern my anywhere-anytime-anyplace-for-any-reason attitude for sharing the Gospel with anyone!
In the book of Acts 8: 28-40, Philip was given an assignment by an angel of the Lord to go down the road from Jerusalem to Gaza. That’s it! Just go! At the end of the story we know that Philip both shared the Gospel and that his listener became a convert to Christ and was baptized! That’s what I call being READY!
So, in my conclusion, I will say this:
Be ready now,
Be ready then,
So on THAT day you will be ready to meet your Savior face to face and to hear Him say:,“Well done, my good and faithful servant!”
In the 1990’s, I put together a ministry handout as a guide for new believers. I called it, “What Should I Do Now That I’m Saved”. It was/is a handout that contains ten things new believers need to do to help them follow through on their decision to follow Christ.
It is not perfect nor comprehensive, but it has been a GREAT help to those that needed more information about what to do after their salvation experience.
It has also been a great tool for believers to have ready when they do the same thing and feel the need to give them out to new believers who can have something tangible to guide them along, coupled with a Bible, of course, which I try always to have on hand or nearby in my vehicle.
So please share or download and print this out and feel free to use it and pass it on to ANY of your evangelistically minded brothers or sisters in the faith to use themselves.
Love y’all/Love you guys,
In Christ,
Dallas