All our Tomorrows

Procrastination comes from the latin "crastinus" which means of tomorrow. A procrastinator is a champion, a master of putting things off until tomorrow, anytime but now.

I grew up as a fan of the original Star Trek TV series and one of the episodes is called "All Our Yesterdays". However, since our church is doing the study called "30 Days To Live" I thought we should look at "All our Tomorrows". We do not know how many tomorrows we will have.

One of the slyest tricks of Satan is to divert our attention and to get us to put things off. He doesn't tell us not to do them... just not to do them right now. The most disasterous situation happens to people who have not yet trusted Christ as Savior but they are on the brink of making that decision when the Devil whispers to them to "think about it a little longer". Sadly, some of those who fall into that trap suddenly die before they get the chance to make that decision for Christ. The scripture that I feel best addresses this is 2 Corinthians 6:2 "(For he says, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I helped thee: behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.)" (emphasis mine).

In the first message in the series yesterday, the pastor brought up many good points and encouraged people to act now in serving Christ which was wonderful. However, I was disappointed in the way he addressed those that were not yet believers who may have been in attendance. I am not sure if he meant it to come out this way but it came across as a "oh don't worry about it... think it over and hopefully one day you'll come to a decision of belief." If that was the intent, that is dead wrong (literally and figuratively). The unbelievers are the last ones who can afford to put off for tomorrow what should be done today. I guess in an attempt to not "hurt someone's feelings" or not "make them mad so they will come back" the now message was not for the lost, or so it seemed.

From all accounts I can find in the New Testament, when Jesus sent his Disciples out to preach the Gospel He did not tell them to give out a laissez-faire Gospel. In fact, Jesus was particularly stern about this. Here is a passage most are familiar with. Mark 6:10-12
"And He told them, Wherever you go into a house, stay there until you leave that place. And if any community will not receive and accept and welcome you, and they refuse to listen to you, when you depart, shake off the dust that is on your feet, for a testimony against them. Truly I tell you, it will be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the judgment day than for that town. So they went out and preached that men should repent (that they should change their minds for the better and heartily amend their ways, with abhorrence of their past sins)."

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This is an addition to this post that I am adding today, Monday Jan 17th. In the original post, I mentioned that the urgency for salvation was not addressed by the pastor. I don't think he reads this blog but in yesterday's message he presented the clearest, and easiest to understand presentation of the Gospel message I have seen. And he emphasized the point that if we are not ready to stand before God because we have not been made right with Him through belief in Christ, then nothing else matters. He correctly pointed out that this one thing is THE important thing. Way to go James, I am proud of you for putting that message to the congregation. I pray that those there who were not believers will be stirred to make that decision for Christ and not put it off another day.