As I read my daily devotional on Friday, October 10, from Max Lucado’s devotional, Grace For The Moment, I knew it provided the perfect follow-up to last week’s message. Hopefully, you remember that last week’s message was on the peace agreement reached between Israel and Hamas, and on living a life focused on love rather than hate. I had not yet begun to write last week’s message at the time, but I had identified the topic. I felt God nudging me that the Max Lucado message from October 10 would be a good follow-up message this week. The end result was that I wrote both last week’s and this week’s messages that Friday, October 10, morning! Of course, I continued to edit both messages throughout the week as is my normal practice. I hope you find them appropriate and related!
The title of Max’s message on October 10 was Waiting Forwardly, and his scripture was:
2 Peter 3:10-11 – The day of the Lord will come like a thief. The skies will disappear with a loud noise … So what kind of people should you be?
Max then writes – Great question. What kind of people should we be? Peter tells us: “You should live holy lives and serve God, as you wait for and look forward to the coming of the day of God (vv 11-12).
Hope of the future is not a license for irresponsibility in the present. Let us wait forwardly, but let us wait.
But for most of us, waiting is not our problem. Or, maybe, I should state, waiting is our problem. We are so good at waiting that we don’t wait forwardly. We forget to look … We are too content. We seldom search the skies … We seldom, if ever, allow the Holy Spirit to interrupt our plans and lead us to worship so that we might see Jesus.
One of my all-time favorite lines of music is from the musical Les Misérables written by Victor Hugo. The line sung by the male star at the end of the musical says “To love another person is to see the face of God.” That line has stuck with me for my entire adult lifetime, and has proven to be my constant challenge throughout my life.
We need to wake up and smell the roses, and make sure we are seeing Jesus when we look into the eyes of others who surround us. Hopefully, both of us are looking at each other and seeing Jesus, but that is not always the case and we may not know how we are seen by others. However, that would not excuse our behavior if we don’t see all others as Jesus!
Last week I shared scripture that Paul had written to the Romans and that scripture ended as follows:
Romans 12:21 – Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Are you following this scripture message in your daily living? Are you comfortable that you are “waiting forwardly” for Jesus?