September 2008 - Are you ready?
09/01/2008
When I ask people, “Are you ready?” they say, “Ready for what?” I am asking each of us to check our heart to see if we are ready for eternity....
Are You Ready? When I ask people, “Are you ready?” they say, “Ready for what?” I am asking each of us to check our heart to see if we are ready for eternity. To be ready for eternity, we have to believe that eternity exists. I did not grow up a Christian and believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, but I always believed that something existed after I died. I had really never thought of death because I had enough to deal with in life. I had never lost anyone really close to me to make me think about death or life after death. But the day my dad was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer with less than a year to live, these questions became very real to me. At the time of the diagnosis, my dad was only 58. All of our lives came to a screeching halt—my dad’s, my mom’s, and mine. Everything I’d been doing took a back burner. The “what ifs” started flooding our minds and my mom said loudly, “This family is not ready.” I instantly knew she was talking about losing my dad, but I was full of bitterness towards God and had no clue how to deal with the possibility of losing my dad. As children and teenagers, Mom and Dad both went to church every Sunday, but after getting married and for the next nearly 40 years, they had just walked away from any truth they had known as teens. There wasn’t a Bible in our home when I was growing up, nor was there one in my home when my son was growing up. We never went to church. Each generation of our family was getting further and further from God. This word cancer was a pivotal point in our family, and changed our lives. In the eyes of the world, our family seemed very functional well adjusted, but in the eyes of God, my family was dysfunctional and not well adjusted at all. Why would I say that, considering the wonderful upbringing and caring parents I had? Because I knew nothing about the Lord Jesus Christ, His Word, or how to be spiritually prepared for eternity and everlasting life. All of a sudden, the famous Scripture John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” began to mean something to me. I will never forget my dad saying to me, “Judy, we are going to find out what this means and where we are going before I go. We have to be ready!” I said, “How do we do that, Dad?” He told me to get a Bible. Dad and I were determined to find the answers to the questions that now filled our minds, about eternity, heaven and hell! My dad knew that he was a “whoever” and to believe in Him, he had to know that Jesus is the One who comes to give everlasting life. We learned the word believe in this verse means to have faith or put our trust in. Our family had been having faith and putting our trust in things that were not going to bring us into everlasting life. The word perish means to destroy fully, but does not mean cease to exist. So in this well-known passage, our family came to the truth of the only way to BE READY for eternity was to put our faith and trust in the Son of God, Jesus Christ, or we would be fully destroyed. As we studied the Scriptures in those last months of my dad’s life here on earth, our family came to know Jesus Christ as our personal Savior and Lord. We came to the understanding that sin was in humanity and we were part of humanity and therefore were sinful, but the hope we have is that Jesus came and died on the cross for our sin and the sin of whoever will believe in Him! As our family experienced a sudden turn in life as we knew it, so might you! My dad was READY and the rest of our family got READY. I challenge you to make sure YOU ARE READY and know that you have everlasting life! God’s call could come at any time—so be ready all the time.