[Faith-talk] Daily Thought for Monday, June 24, 2013

[Paul]

Hello and good day to you all, whether that time of day be morning, afternoon or evening when you both receive and read this little message.  I hope that, by God's matchless grace and His providential care, that your day is going well or went well.

Today's article is one that you can share with your unsaved loved ones, whether blind or sighted.  It was written by the late Dr. Ralph Montanus (1919-1986) and is entitled "What Are You Living for?", rendered as follows:

What am I living for? What do I want out of life? What goal must I reach to feel I have arrived at true happiness and success?

Have you ever asked yourself these questions? Perhaps not.

Maybe you have been too busy going places and doing things to decide what your ultimate destination is.  However, even if you have not defined your goal in life, you must have one, for without a goal, life has no purpose, and we lose the will to live.  Scientists tell us that, once that happens, death sets in and overtakes us much sooner than it would otherwise.

Well-known "authorities" on the subject tell us that man's basic wants are not nearly as we might suppose.  In fact, they limit them to seven, namely, the want and desire for:
1.  Good health and the preservation of life
2.  Food
3.  Sleep
4.  Money and the things money can buy
5.  Love and, for most of us, matrimony
6.  The well-being of our children
7.  A feeling of importance

If, as these "authorities" assert, the above list completes the total of man's wants, then their satisfaction should bring complete happiness.  But would it?

Go over the list again, and you will see that every one of these wants is temporal, for the present time only, and even if their satisfaction could bring happiness, it would still leave us utterly unprepared for eternity.  None of these satisfactions would be of any use or value to us there.  How foolish then to build our lives around them!

What should you and I be living for? For God.  The life that is lived for Him not only leads to Heaven; it's a foretaste of Heaven, and all around it little heavens spring up.

Think! One hundred years from today, it will not matter to you what you had in your pocket this moment, whether it was a million dollars or two cents.

One hundred years from now, you will not be concerned with what your friends and the world thought of you, but it will matter supremely what the Lord thinks of you.

A million years from today, you will have already spent a thousand thousand years in heaven or hell.  Which will it be?

Right now, you have it within your power to make the choice that will seal your eternal destiny.  What will your decision be? Right now, will you get down on your knees and ask the Lord Jesus Christ to come into your heart?

Take Him as your personal Savior.  Surrender all to Him.  Begin to read His Word and pray.  Then, and only then, can you make your life count for both time and eternity.

And there you have Dr. Montanus' article.  I hope that, as you share this little bit of encouragement with others, that somehow a seed will be planted and others, perhaps you, will help to germinate that seed to such a point that your loved one(s) will accept Jesus as his/her personal Lord and Savior.  Remember the words spoken by our Lord in, I think, Luke's gospel where we read that the angels rejoice over just one sinner who repents than over the ninety-nine who need no repentance.

And now may the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob just keep us safe, individually and collectively, in these last evil days in which we live.  Your Christian friend and brother, Paul