If you’ve ever decided to put your trust in Jesus for your forgiveness, for the free gift of eternal life, then you’ll know the joy that that brings. But, all too many people take the first step … and that’s it. That’s where they stop. And then … then they wonder why their new life in Christ is going nowhere.

There’s a big difference often between urgent tasks and important ones. All too often we allow the urgent tasks to crowd out the important ones, it happens to all of us.

I have to tell you I have more urgent things crowding in on me everyday than I’d like to think about. You may have been joining me here on the program for a while and you think to yourself, “you know that guy on the radio, he has a good life, he just has to sit down for ten minutes every day and chat with me and that’s pretty much it.”

Huh, I wish but let me tell you there are more radio messages to be prepared and to be written. I do over five hundred of them every year, more booklets to be written, more TV programs to be shot, I do around eighty of those every year and then there’s the ministry to run, lots of travel, detailed minutia in running the office, managing the ministry team in four countries and on and on it goes.

I was sitting at my desk in the office the other day and one person asked me this so I went to help them and as soon as I was finished another one asked me that then the next one and the next one. Before I knew it an hour and a half had gone by, all apparently urgent things and of course they were.

But it’s just so easy to end up running around doing things for other people, answering emails, doing this and that and the other thing and before you know it the day has gone, the week’s gone, oops it’s the first of the month again and so life just slips by, days, weeks, months, years, decades slip by.

A few months ago I watched a great German Christmas advertisement. It was about an old man who couldn’t seem to get his family to come and spend Christmas with him because they were all too busy doing all the urgent things they had to do in their jobs and with their children. So he sent out a death notice and they all came over and there he was, Christmas table set and he said to them ‘how else was I going to get you all together?’ The closing caption to the ad was ‘It’s time to come home.’

Spending time with elderly parents is important. Giving your family the best of your time, it’s really important and living your life for Jesus, day after day every day is really important. But as you and I both know there are so many urgent things that crowd out our time and so we feel guilty about not giving our family time, our children time, our elderly parent’s time.

We feel guilty about the fact that we don’t make the time to pray, that we don’t seem to have time to open that Bible that’s gathering dust somewhere in the cupboard that we don’t have time to, well to do the important things.

A busy young man, a wealthy young man once confronted Jesus about his priorities. He asked Jesus ‘what do I have to do to get eternal life?’ What’s the most important thing to do? Let’s see how the exchange unfolds, it’s quite illuminating when we think of our own situation. Matthew chapter 19 verses 16 to 26.

Then someone came to Him and said, ‘teacher what good deed must I do to have eternal life?’ And Jesus said to him, ‘why do ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you wish to enter into life keep the Commandments’. He said to Him, ‘which ones?’ And Jesus said, ‘you shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, honour your father and mother also, you shall love your neighbour as yourself.

And the young man said to him, ‘I have kept all of these, what do I still lack?’ Jesus said to him, ‘if you wish to be perfect go, sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven, then come and follow me.’ When the young man heard this word he went away grieving for he had many possessions.

Then Jesus said to His disciples ‘truly I tell you it will be hard for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God.’ When the disciples heard this they were greatly astounded and then said, ‘then who can be saved?’ But Jesus looked at them and said, ‘for mortals it is impossible but for God all things are possible.

Now you might be wondering to yourself, “how does this story apply to me?” Well the rich young ruler was a busy guy and he’s checking in with Jesus to make sure that he has his priority’s right in the middle of all that busyness ’cause he knows something’s not quite right.

Don’t murder – check, don’t commit adultery – check, don’t steal – check, don’t bear false witness – check. He was okay in each department but still he knew that something wasn’t quite right. Like you, like me. We know when things aren’t quite right. All the budyness in the world can’t wallpaper over the deep feeling inside that something’s missing.

And then Jesus puts His finger right on it, the young man’s wealth. “Give it all away” says Jesus, “then you’ll be fine” and with that one thing the rich young ruler knows that’s my problem, that one thing. He’s making his wealth more important than loving God, than following Jesus and he goes away grieving for he had many possessions.

What’s that one thing in your life that’s keeping you from doing the most important thing? And of course Jesus left out the most important thing in all of that, that you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and strength and mind. This is the first and greatest Commandment. And the second one is just like it, you should love your neighbour as yourself. On these two Commandments hang the whole law and all the prophets.

You and I are just so good, so good at coming up with excuses. I’m too busy, you don’t realise how hard it is for me, there’s this and there’s that and there’s the other thing and before you know it life has slipped away. The time is short people, seriously short. The days fly by so quickly and so how we spend our time comes down to our priorities.

Have you found yourself making excuses? Well I don’t have time to visit my ageing mother, I’m too tired by the time I get to the weekend, I don’t have time to read my Bible, to go and visit that sick friend, to use my gifts and abilities and resources for God. Excuses, excuses, excuses.

So you’re too busy are you? Let me tell you it happens to all of us at some point. If I spend all of my time racing around after other people at work here at the ministry of Christianityworks I’d never find the time to sit down and prepare these messages. And when you think about it in our ministry this one thing is pretty much the most important thing, without me doing that there is no ministry, there is no impact in people’s lives, it just ain’t going to happen.

So with the million and one things I have going on at work and at home I’ve decided that after spending my time with the Lord each morning, this one thing, preparing these messages, is the most important thing in the ministry. There are days and there are weeks where frankly I lose sight of that because of all the other things going on but pretty much each week, as I plan my week, I diarise the chunks of time that I need to prepare these messages, I block out that time and it has to be something really big to get me to move it.

It’s normally really early in the morning. I mean I was up at 3.15 in the morning when I prepared today’s message, a time where the phone doesn’t ring, a time where people don’t interrupt me. First of course I spend some time praying and reading God’s Word for myself, then it was straight into this one thing.

The bottom line for me and I suspect for you is that unless we decide our priorities, unless we deliberately set aside time to make the important things happen then those important things, I mean the really important things in our lives simply aren’t going to get done EVER. Because there will always be something else, there will always be something that pretends to be far more urgent to crowd out the important things.

I am sure that Jesus had a lot of things to do, He had twelve disciples whom he was ministering to, He had crowds to speak to, He had all those things to do yet He still found time to slip away early in the morning and spend time with His Father in heaven. So let me ask you, what are your important things, what are the important things in your life that just aren’t getting done?

Most of us, well most of us aren’t really thrill seekers, most of us don’t go bungy jumping or parachuting or rocketing around a race track at 150 mph and so most of us, well we like things to be safe and predictable. Yeah safe and predictable is really good.

It’s true isn’t it? We like things to be safe and predictable. I mean we’re happy to get our thrills by watching movies and television shows, you know the suspense drama, will the hero live or will he die? Will the heroine survive? Let them take all the risks. We call that entertainment. A bit of nail biting, edge of your seat drama, well it’s good fun as long as it happens on the screen and not in my life, right?

But our lives, my life, your life, we definitely, definitely want that to be safe and predictable. Not boring necessarily, we don’t mind being stretched a little sometimes but safe and predictable is good. Let me give you a few examples so you get my point.

Mum and dad bring a small child into the world, what you love is when bubs has the same sleep patterns every day and that way you can get in sync and get a bit of a rest too but as things happen sleep patterns change, they get disrupted and so you walk around bleary eyed. You were hoping for predictable but what you got was unpredictable.

And before junior starts walking you child proof your home, right? You move all the precious ornaments up high where they can’t be reached and damaged, if you have stairs you buy one of those kiddy gates to put at the top of the stairs so that junior doesn’t fall down but still your little darling manages to get in trouble and hurt himself.

Two simple examples of how you try and make your world safe and predictable. Now there’s nothing wrong with either of those but we are programmed to aim for safe and predictable. We like routines, we don’t like surprises, we don’t like risks.

Compare full time employment to casual employment. Most of us would much rather have a full time job because why? Yeah you guessed it, it’s safe and predictable. A regular income coming in each and every month, you can plan your budget, your costs, your expenses and everything is just fine right?

Until you get sick, until you have two months off work, until your sick leave runs out which is why so many people these days carry income protection insurance. Now why am I carrying on about this? Simply to make the point that we arrange our whole lives to create a comfort zone around us. Almost everything we do is designed to make our lives safe and predictable.

The problem is Jesus is anything but safe and predictable. He was wild and untamed. The religious leaders of the day tried to reign Him in but He kept on going out there and breaking the rules, healing people on the Sabbath, hanging around with sinners, tax collectors, prostitutes, touching leper’s and by and large upsetting the safe and predictable and lucrative lifestyles of the rich and the famous, the Pharisee’s and the Sadducee’s.

And it was this very clash between the unpredictable, unconventional, radical, subversive Jesus and the comfort zones of the religious establishment that ultimately got Jesus crucified, this was the very reason they plotted to have Him killed. My point being that safe and predictable on the one hand and Jesus on the other are a bit like oil and water, they don’t mix, they never have and they never will.

Sometimes we read stories in the Bible so often that they just seem mundane, routine. We don’t think too much about them anymore but time and time again God calls men and women out of their comfort zones to follow Him on a risky venture. Here are just a few quick examples, Genesis chapter 12 verses 1 to 4:

Now the Lord said to Abram ‘go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name to be great so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and the one who curses you I will curse and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. So Abram went as the Lord had told him and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy five years old and he departed from Haran.

And the point is Abram was really wealthy and very comfortable, he was also seventy five years old and childless and yet God calls him out of this comfortable, out of this safe and predictable existence where all the buses and the trains ran on time, on a long arduous journey towards the absolutely impossible.

Abraham and Sarah were old and childless yet God promises to make them the parents of a great nation. To Abraham’s credit he went just as the Lord had told him. Then there’s King Jehoshaphat. A mighty army comes against him, the odds are overwhelming, he is absolutely petrified but he seeks the Lord and a prophet is raised up and he speaks, 2 Chronicles chapter 20 verses 15 to 20.

The prophet said, ‘listen all Judah and inhabitants of Jerusalem and King Jehoshaphat’. ‘Thus, says the Lord to you. Do not fear or be dismayed of this great multitude for the battle is not yours but it’s Gods. Tomorrow go down against them, they will come up the ascent of Ziz; you will find them at the end of the valley before the wilderness of Jeruel.

This battle is not for you to fight, take your positions, stand still and see the victory of the Lord on your behalf O Judah and Jerusalem. Do not fear or be dismayed, tomorrow go out against them and the Lord will be with you.’ Then Jehoshaphat bowed down with his face on the ground and all Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem fell down before the Lord, worshipping the Lord.

Do you notice what God told the king to do? To leave the city, to leave the apparent safety behind the defences that you’ve built and go out in the open and stand there against this great and mighty army, get out of your comfort zone and just stand there and wait for God to fight on your behalf.

Huh, sensational. See it’s so easy to read that story and think to yourself ‘oh that’s great, God did it all, they didn’t have to do anything’. Well God did do it all in the end if you read on but Jehoshaphat and his army still had to leave their comfort zone and put themselves in absolute mortal danger out in the open.

And again, Mark chapter 1 verses 16 to 20.

As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee He saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea for they were fishermen and Jesus said to them, ‘follow me and I will make you fish for people’ and immediately they left their nets and followed Jesus. As He went a little farther He saw James, son of Zebedee and his brother John who were in their boat mending their nets. Immediately He called them and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed Jesus.

I mean these young fellows were fishermen, fishing was their business, their living. They got up early every morning, went out and hauled in the catch and sold it at the markets and made a good solid living out of fishing, safe and predictable. Now this Jesus comes along and sweeps them all up and calls them to leave their safe, comfortable, predictable lives to follow Him where? Well who knows?

Do you see a pattern emerging here? They’re just three examples but you see it over and over and over again throughout the Bible, God calling people out of their comfort zones into the risky business of following Jesus.

God’s mightiest works don’t happen in our comfort zones. When God called me out of my nice, safe, predictable and let me say, rather lucrative IT consulting career into this ministry of Christianityworks the ministry was pretty much dead. No radio programs, no donors, no income, the last one out turn out the lights. Pretty much terminal you’d have to say.

But that was the call and the reason I followed is that I didn’t want to die wondering. What if I’d followed God’s call that day? How would it have turned out? I didn’t want to get to the end of my life and look back on a string of missed opportunities. I didn’t want to look back on a wasted life.

Let me tell you something; safe and predictable has derailed many a plan that God has had for His people and it will continue to do so. So when Jesus calls you to what He’s calling you to will you go?

So many people, I mean so many people have felt the call of God on their lives and yet they’ve been too timid to step out. Afraid of failing, afraid of losing, afraid of risking it all. What’s the matter with us? Why do we do that?

They say that about 12.3% of the population are natural entrepreneurs. Now I’m sure that if you used different scales and measures you’d go up or down by a few percentage points here or there, nevertheless I think it’s safe to say that less than 20% of us, fewer than one in five are natural risk takers. People who are prepared to scout out an opportunity and then put it all on the line, to have a go and turn that opportunity into a successful venture.

That’s okay; if we were all entrepreneurs then it would be a pretty unstable world in which we live. We need people to front up and host regular jobs and deliver a regular pay check otherwise our economy and our society simply wouldn’t function. But have you ever seen an opportunity, a possibility, a glimmer of something that just might turn into something and just been too timid to step out?

It doesn’t have to be a business venture, it might be that your Church is crying out for someone to help with the kids ministry or the sound desk or the stall out in the street and you think to yourself, “yeah I could do that, I think I’d enjoy that actually.” But then for some reason you just couldn’t bring yourself to put up your hand, to step out, to have a go.

Well if you’ve ever been in that situation you’re not alone, you’re not the only one, we’ve all been there and if the truth be known it’s taking that first step that stops all too many people from realising what God has planned for them.

I remember as a young Christian going to a Church in a green leafy southern suburb of Sydney called Oyster Bay. There was a brochure on the back of the table for a local Bible college and the moment I picked it up God stirred something in my heart, I felt Him nudging me in that direction.

So I took the brochure home, I got all excited, read it cover to cover several times and then there it sat on the coffee table for weeks. It’s not that I’m a indecisive person, I’m not but it just seemed ludicrous, crazy, that Berni, the former army officer now IT consultant should go and study at a Bible college. See it’s at this point that things all too often come to a screaming halt because we’re afraid of taking that first step.

God’s people are in mortal danger and Esther the Hebrew has now become the queen but one of the king’s advisors, Haman, tricks the king into ordering that all Hebrews in his kingdom should be killed. Esther’s uncle, Mordecai, who lives out there as a commoner, decides that he has to do something about it. So he goes to see his niece, Queen Esther and implores her to go and see the king to partition him on behalf of the Hebrew people.

Well that’s a good plan but there’s a huge risk. Let’s see how it pans out, Esther chapter 4 verses 11 to 16.

All the kings servants and the people of the king’s provinces know that if any man or woman goes in to the king inside the inner court without being called there is but one law, all alike are to be put to death. Only if the king holds out the sceptre to someone may that person live. I myself have not been called to come in to the king for thirty days. When they told Mordecai what Esther had said, Mordecai told them to reply to Esther thus.

Do not think that in the king’s palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silence at such a time as this relief and deliverance will rise up for the Jews from another quarter but you and your father’s family will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for such a time as this.

Then Esther said in reply to Mordecai, ‘go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa and hold a fast on my behalf and neither eat nor drink for three days, night and day. I and my maids will also fast as you do. After that I will go to the king though it is against the law and if I perish I perish.

What an extreme situation. All the Hebrew people’s lives are at stake here, all her relatives. The whole Hebrew nation. She’s in a position to go and see the king, her husband, to talk about it but she faces a huge risk. He had done away with his first wife, would Esther now follow the same fate?

She’s teetering on the edge and then Mordecai makes that powerful point, “perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this”. Maybe God put you there in that position to deal with this very problem and that’s the thing, so often opportunities come disguised as problems don’t they?

It was a problem to me that I’d been a Christian for all of five minutes and I felt God calling me to go to Bible College. When I applied and I had to go for an interview I remember feeling like such an incredible fraud. I mean I knew nothing, nothing about the Bible, NOTHING and yet it was at Bible College that I came into contact with the ministry of Christianityworks. It was at Bible college that the next part of God’s plan for my life was already waiting. If I hadn’t gone I wouldn’t be with you here right now having this chat.

See too many of God’s mighty plans go awry because of that crucial point of taking that first step, we’re too timid to step out. God put Esther in that place to risk her life for her people in order to preserve the Hebrew nation so that one day all the nations would be blessed as God’s Son was born in Bethlehem.

Get a revelation today, God has plans, He has mighty plans and He calls His people to be ready and waiting like soldiers waiting for the call to the battle. When a military unit receives deployment orders from it’s government the men and women step up, put on their uniform, take their pack and their provisions and their weapons and they head out into deployments that risk their lives. It’s what they’ve been trained to do, it’s what they’ve been called to do and so they go.

God has made you with a purpose, Ephesians chapter 2 verse 10.

For you are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do the good works that He prepared beforehand for you to walk in to.

I’ll say it again; God made you with a purpose, with a specific plan in mind. It’s a good plan, God is faithful and when that call comes, as it always does, don’t be afraid to take that first step for maybe it was for a time such as this that He created you. Maybe God’s calling you to something big, maybe God’s calling you to something small, it doesn’t matter. We all have our part to play in His plans and purposes.

It seems such a small thing to me to be called to this humble, underfunded Bible college that had its premises in an old truck warehouse. It was a crummy little library not a big impressive library like the denominational college down the road.

Lecture after lecture, often at night after a hard day’s work and I’m not a night person I have to tell you, assignment after assignment, tutorials, exams, finish one unit, onto the next, it was so ordinary but then one day the former head of Christianityworks came to teach a half unit in media, one thing led to another and here I am with you and millions of other people who listen to this program in a hundred and sixty countries – go figure.

How did that happen? God only knows. And I think back to that first step of applying to attend the Bible College, that brochure lying on the coffee table in my lounge room for weeks and I think of the complete tragedy it would have been just to leave it lying there without following the call that God had put on my heart.

And I know that as you look at your situation, your circumstances things look plain and ordinary, it’s so easy to imagine that God doesn’t have a plan but He does. Listen to me, He does and He’s calling you to a life of significance, a life that will impact others for His glory. A life that, who knows, a life that perhaps He created for a time such as this. Don’t be afraid to take that first step.

Life is full of decisions. Big decisions and small decisions. We all make all sorts of decisions dozens of times each and every day from the insignificant to the life changing but there’s one decision that each one of us has to make at some point in our lives. “Will I give my life to Jesus or will I live my life for me?”

Life is an incredibly precious thing. Your life is an incredibly precious thing. Think about it, you were born out of your mother’s womb, your parents loved you, they raised you, you became a teenager and then an adult with a mind, with passions for certain things, with gifts and abilities and yeah, some wrinkles and bumps as well.

And while you were still back there in your mother’s womb God made you who you are today. Psalm 139 verses 13 to 18.

For it was you who formed my inward parts. God you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works that I know very well. My frame wasn’t hidden from you when I was being made in secret intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me when none of them as yet existed. How weighty to me are your thoughts O God, how vast is the sum of them. I try to count them, they are more than the sand, I come to the end, I am still with you.

Absolutely incredible. Handcrafted by the living God to be who you are today and to do the things that He planned for you to do. That’s right because in His Book were written all the days of your life before any of them as yet existed. He had a plan ready to go before you were born and He made you to be a perfect fit to His plan for your life. Unbelievable!

See that rocks me to the core every time I read it but at the same point you and I have become responsible for our own lives. At some point we have the wisdom and the maturity to make our own choices.

I remember back when I finished high school, it was a time when I believed in Jesus. I decided I wanted to become a minister. Well you know what happens at that point, all the altruism evaporates and you go and get yourself a career and you find yourself on the treadmill of wealth and materialism. It’s just what happens to most of us at that age and it’s what happened to me.

Over the next twenty or so years I lived my life for me, it was all about me, what I could get for me. As you may have heard me say in the past it didn’t satisfy me but there you have it, that’s what I chose until I came crashing down and God brought me to a decision point again. Who was I going to live my life for, me or Him?

That’s the question each one of us needs to answer. So let me ask it of you here and now, who are you actually living your life for, for yourself or for God? Come on, be honest with yourself. Look at the priorities in your life, what do you give the greatest weight to, what do you expend the greatest energy for, how are you living your life and for whom are you living your life?

When we take a good hard look in the mirror at ourselves in that way sometimes it’s a bit of a shock to see who’s looking back at us. We think we may have been living our lives for Jesus but when we forensically examine the facts, when we consider what we’re spending all our energies on, what we’re sacrificing for, where our money is going, well those facts often tell a different story.

So today I just want to bring you back to this question of who or what you are living your life for. Today I just want to pause for us to take a breath and to answer that question honestly for ourselves ’cause who knows this may be your last day, this may be my last day on this earth.

I don’t mean to be an alarmist but that’s a distinct possibility. When the clock strikes midnight it could be that your heart or mine is no longer beating. Just quietly have a listen to this little parable that Jesus told, Luke chapter 12 verses 16 to 21.

The land of a rich man produced abundantly and he thought to himself, ‘what should I do for I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, “I will do this, I will pull down my barns and I will build larger ones and there I will store my grain and my goods and I will say to my soul, soul you have ample goods laid up for many years, relax, eat, drink, be merry.

But God said to him, ‘you fool, for this very night your life is being demanded of you and the things that you have prepared whose will they be? So it is for those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.’

Come on, isn’t that all too often how we’re living our lives, focused on the here and now, working away as though owning our own home and having a healthy retirement fund are the most important things on this earth, isn’t it? It’s so easy to say, “I’m living my life for Jesus” when all along the truth is that we’re living our lives for ourselves, rather selfishly too I might add.

If you were arrested and put on trial for being a Christian you have to ask yourself whether the prosecution would be able to find enough evidence to convict you. Well, would they? I know this is difficult, I know that these questions maybe making you squirm, I get that but isn’t it better for us to be asking them now while we’re sitting here with enough time to do something about it.

How much energy have you put into God’s work in the last twenty four hours? I don’t mean labouring away at a full time ministry job, not necessarily, I’m talking about living your life, the simple ordinary things that you do every day for Jesus. Loving others, being kind to strangers, having a melody in your heart for Jesus.

When Jesus was asked what was the most important thing in life, this is how He answered? Matthew chapter 22 verses 37 to 40.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first Commandment and the second is like it, you shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two Commandments hang all law and the prophets.

It seems to me to be all too easy to live our lives for ourselves and ignore God and other people. So whether sometime in the past you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Saviour and perhaps you’ve just drifted back to a materialistic priority set like everyone else or whether you’ve never accepted Jesus as your Lord and your Saviour I want to give you the opportunity right now to pray a prayer with me to give your life, lock, stock and barrel over to God. Are you ready?

Father God

I know that I’m not in the right place. As I’ve been listening today I’ve just come to this deep realisation in my heart that other things have crowded you out of my life, that I have a wrong set of priorities. Please forgive me in Jesus name, I am so sorry. Today and from this day on I want Jesus to be my saviour.

I know that I’ve done so many things wrong, so many things against you and the only way to come back to you is through Jesus, through what Jesus did on the cross for me and I know I want to live the rest of my life for you in your power, for your glory and to do that I want Jesus not just to be my saviour but to be the Lord of my life. I want you to be the number one priority in my life so that I can love others as you have loved me.

I give my life to you, all that I am, all that I have, every hope, every dream I give to you. Please take me just as I am. In Jesus’ name I pray.

Amen

Wow! If you just prayed that prayer with me God has heard you, God has forgiven you, God has accepted you through Jesus and He has given you a new start, a fresh start in life. It doesn’t matter what you’ve done in the past, your slate is wiped clean, you are a completely new creation and your life will never be the same again.

If you didn’t pray that prayer with me and you know that you don’t have your priorities right, hey don’t leave it until tomorrow. Go to Him today, get in a right place with Him and may you enjoy your relationship with God through Jesus Christ from here to eternity.

If you have ever decided to put your trust in Jesus for forgiveness, for the free gift of eternal life then you’ll know the joy that that brings. But all too many people take that first step and that’s it, that’s where they stop and then they wonder why their new life in Christ is going nowhere.

I remember the day that I gave my life to Jesus as though it was yesterday; it sits in my memory as clear as a bell. It was around 11.20 am on Sunday the 15th of October 1995. My life in the months and the weeks leading up to that day was just awful, I mean to this day that time ranks absolutely the worst time of my life.

A few months earlier I’d come close to taking my own life, I was depressed, my world was falling apart, my future was uncertain, it was just horrible, I was absolutely at rock bottom. And what made that all the more difficult for me was that I was someone who had always succeeded at everything that I had ever turned my hand to. If you would have asked people about me back then they’d have told you I was a tough, brutal so and so but that my drive and my determination meant that I was also very successful at what I did.

Success, as it turned out for me, was a lonely empty place. It was that loneliness, that emptiness that drove me to the edge. So life was awful but these friends of mine opened their hearts and their home to me. They loved me when I was difficult to love, they stood by me and on that day, on that Sunday they invited me to go to Church with them.

I remember the day, it was bright and sunny but cool. I had sweaty palms walking up the hill to that Church building. The Pastor, a bloke by the name of Ted Keating, preached a message that day with the title God Is Calling You. Ha sounds a bit corny now but it had a powerful impact on me. His main text was Genesis chapter 12, The Call of Abraham.

And after the service I walked outside while all you Christians were having your cups of tea and coffee and chatting with the little other groups of people that you have in your Church and I sat down under a big gum tree and I gave my life to Jesus. Later on that day these friends of mine were driving me to the airport as I recall and despite all the dreadful things that were going on in my life I was filled with the most incredible joy.

I was like a balloon filled with helium bouncing around in the back of their car. Now maybe you’ve had a similar experience, maybe you’ve never given your life to Jesus or maybe you’ve believed in Him as long as you can remember. We all have different journey’s, different paths but at some point giving your life to Christ is the single most powerful thing that you can do.

But the problem is, there always seems to be a ‘but’ doesn’t there? That many of the people who ultimately take that step of accepting Jesus as their Saviour don’t take the next step. You see that step that I just told you about, how it happened in my life, was only the first step. It’s a step over the threshold into a new life, a rich life, an abundant life. The Bible says in Romans chapter 10 and verse 9 that if you;

Confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and you believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead you will be saved.

That’s about putting your trust in Jesus but do you notice what is says that you and I are called to confess with our lips? That Jesus Christ is Lord, Lord of all including the Lord of our lives, your life, my life and if Jesus has truly become the Lord of your life then His will becomes the overriding factor, the overriding measure, the overriding decision factor in your life.

The problem is that people want to accept Jesus as their Saviour but not as their Lord. Jesus knew that which is why He also said and I’m reading from Matthew chapter 7 verses 21 to 23. He said;

Not everybody who calls me Lord, Lord will enter the Kingdom of heaven but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. For on that day many will say to me ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many deeds of power in your name?’ And I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you, go away from me you evil doers.

You see that’s about self deception. You and I, we’re masters of self deception, we kid ourselves that we’ve made Jesus Lord of our lives and then we go off and live however we want, we toddle off and we live our lives with gay abandon, spending money on ourselves hand over fist, cocooning ourselves in luxury, ignoring what the Word of God says about this and that and helping the poor and loving our enemies and all that stuff.

Yeah I believe in Jesus, check, tick in the box. I’m into heaven, I have the gift of eternal life. Well, ah, no, not according to Jesus because unless our lives reflect through our thoughts and our words and our deeds that Jesus truly is the Lord of our lives then we’re absolutely kidding ourselves, we’re in for a rude shock on that day when we stand before God in judgement.

Let me ask you a question, imagine a man is married to a woman, they are husband and wife. But then that man goes out and dates other women, sleeps with other women, he doesn’t care for his wife, he’s not loyal and faithful to his wife. What does his actions say about the genuineness and the reality of their marriage?

Well clearly they’re married legally on paper but if you put the reality, the genuineness of that marriage to the test in a court of law, a court that’s intent on examining the facts of the evidence, that court would have to find that that marriage isn’t real.

It’s exactly the same with our relationship with Jesus, it has to be real. Jesus is the King of kings, Jesus is the Lord of lords and once you’ve taken that first step of believing in Him and accepting Him as your Saviour, the second step is living out the rest of your life with Him as your Lord. The second step is laying down your life for Him rather than continuing to live the way you always lived. Luke chapter 9 verses 23 to 26;

Then He said to them all, ‘if any of you want to become my followers let them deny themselves, take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it and those who lose their life for my sake will save it. What does it prophet them if they gain the whole world but they lose or forfeit themselves? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words of them the Son of man will be ashamed when He comes into His glory and the glory of the Father and of the Holy angels.

Can I ask you, how are you living your life? Are you busy saving your own life, looking after numero uno, feathering your own nest, is that how you are living? Because if it is then the evidence suggests that your relationship with Jesus is not genuine. And to the extent that you’re ashamed to stand for Jesus in this sinful, hurting world, to the same extent Jesus will be ashamed of you on that judgement day that we’ll all face one day.

Or are you sacrificing each and every day the things that were once dear to you in order to follow wherever Jesus leads you. If that’s the case then though you may stumble and falter along the way Jesus won’t be ashamed of you on that judgement day.

People don’t like it when I talk about these things. I’ve had people say to me, “Berni, I’m saved by grace through faith, it doesn’t matter what I do, I’ll still go to heaven.” Well the first part of that is true, we are saved by grace through faith, absolutely that’s true. Nothing you or I can do can work us into Gods favour, only faith in Jesus can wipe our slate clean, nothing else.

But the second part, when you listen to what Jesus has to say, well it’s not true because you will know a tree by its fruit. A good tree bears good fruit, a bad tree bears bad fruit. The fruit is the evidence of what’s going on inside that tree and the only way that I know of turning bad into good is having a relationship with Jesus. A personal, intimate relationship with Jesus.

Because when we have that the Holy Spirit comes and fills us from the inside out and takes the bad things and turns them into good. Good fruit is something the Holy Spirit produces in us and through us. So let me ask you, have you taken the second step? Are you living the life with Jesus as your Lord? Or are you going to be one of those many who gets a rude surprise on judgement day?