If I'm dying...

 

What if you knew you would die in a day/month/year, what would you change? 

There is a reason for this question to be asked, but too often it can bring shame and guilt. It should bring hope, but it's hard to let it do that in a world that says you don't do enough. 

So here is my answer.

If I knew I had one year to live, of course, I would change things, and I should. Some responsibilities and issues need to be covered if I'm going to die. However, I should live neither in fear of death nor in denial. I need to plan as if I'm going to live, which includes writing a series of books that will take more than a year to write. I need to live with integrity and love, so if I'm taken from my family today, they will not feel as if I cheated them for some dream in the sky. 

If a 19-year-old is going to die in a year, yes, quit college; if not, stick with it. If you don't think you're going to die, plan and invest, but don't count on them. If you're working all of the time, stop and smell the roses and invest in things that can't be bought. 

Okay, I've ranted long enough. The answer is, am I living today as God would have me, not culture, not peer pressure, nothing but God, and if I am, I'm okay.

Know When To Run

Know when to run

The book of Ecclesiastes says there's a time to build up and a time to tear down. There's a time to stay, and there's a time to leave. There's a time to get away. A lot of times, we think in our own lives that we should be building more, and we should be doing something to add or get more, especially in the church. We always want to grow, and we never want to be taking away. But sometimes there's a time and a place where things change. There's a time to tear apart. There's a time to rend. There's a time to, well, run away.

And when we look in  Jeremiah 45, God has a message to Baruch, Jeremiah's scribe, who is seeing all this stuff that is taking place. The Lord says,  "This is what the Lord says. I will overthrow what I have built and uproot what I have planted throughout the land. Should you seek great things for yourself? Seek them not. For I will bring disaster on all people, declares the Lord. But wherever you go, I will let you escape with your life."

God is telling Baruch, "Don't try to hold on to things. Let them go." At this point, Baruch, trying to hold on to things or gather things for himself, would only bring misery because he was going to lose them. And there are times in our lives when we have to be willing to let go. Because if we try to hold on to them, they will bring pain. There's a time when a child grows up, and we have to let go. There's a time when we get older, and we've got to, well, release the keys of the car. There are times we have to let go of something we may like to do because we are no longer capable of it. There may be ministries in the church that at one time were a great work, but now are not. Maybe they were a great work for you to do, but now you are at a point in your life where you're not going to be successful if you continue to do them.

And God may say to you, "It's time to let go." And the problem is, if we keep holding on, when God says let go, we will have pain. There will be agony. And that's why sometimes God says, "Let go." We've got to be willing to make sure and listen. And let go when God says to.

No, don't give up too soon. Don't just throw in the towel when things get hard. But when God truly speaks, it's time to walk away. Then you need to walk away. Or they use the words of Kenny Rogers in The Gambler. "You've got to know when to walk away." Sometimes, "you've got to know when to run."

One thing you always want to run to is God.

Photo by Jenny Hill on Unsplash