EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 12/14/2024 9:04 PM
My Worship Time Focus: PT-7 “Intro
to ‘The Purifying Hope’
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference:
1 John 2:28-3:3
Message of the verses: “28 Now, little children,
abide in Him, so that when He appears, we may have confidence and not shrink
away from Him in shame at His coming. 29 If you know that He is righteous, you
know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of Him. 1 See how great a love the Father has
bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we
are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. 2
Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we
will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see
Him just as He is. 3 And everyone who
has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.”
I have two more features on hope to look at in order
to finish up this introduction. A tenth
feature of hope is that it removes the fear of death. Now it is interesting that I had lunch with
my oldest daughter from a marriage that only lasted for four years as I was 19
when I was married to my 18 year old wife.
I won’t get into all of the details except to say that I was not a
believer until I was almost 27 years old and by that time my daughter was
adopted by her step-father and I did not see her again until she was around 48
years old. I prayed for her for all of
those years and she sent me a letter about eight or so years ago asking if I
wanted to get with her. I almost fell
down after opening the letter on my way back from the mail box. Needless to say that we got together and she
got to meet my family and now my two sisters and her get together around once a
month to have lunch. Yesterday at our
lunch the subject of dying came up and I stated that I was not afraid to die
anymore. She asked me how long have I
not been afraid of dying and I told her almost 51 years ago when I became a
believer. My thoughts are that she thought
I was arrogant not really realizing why I said that. Now one day after that conversation I am
reading this tenth point on hope and I do not feel that this was just a confidence,
but from the Lord.
Now
what I am going to do now it to quote my testimony which I have planned to use
in my Sunday school class tomorrow, as I teach from the first chapter of
Colossians. My testimony seems to me
that it is unique and in this lesson for tomorrow part of it is talking about
how people come to the Lord and that it should be shared with others and so I
will share it here this evening, something that I certainly did not plan, but
since this tenth feather of hope has to do with having a fear of death removed,
which is part of my testimony I think that this will fit in, and then Lord
willing we will look at this tenth feature of hope in my next SD.
My Testimony
Please allow me to tell
you how my relationship with God began.
When I was a young boy I went to a church that taught us that before we
reached our 12th birthday if we died we would go straight to
heaven. At the age of ten I went fishing
with some of my friends, who were mostly older than I was, and so in order to
impress them I began to swear, swear a lot.
It was the beginning of a habit that I would never be able to stop on my
own.
Another thing that happened to me when
I was young was that my mother taught us how she heard that the world was going
to end. She told us that winter was
going to turn into summer and then summer would turn into winter and then the
world would burn up. To a young boy this
was very frightening to me.
We fast forward to the summer of 1966
when on the fifth of July I was inducted into the Army. This frightened me because there was a war
going on and I surely did not want to die in a war at the age of 19. I made a deal with God that if He would get
me out of the Army that I would stop swearing, for I knew this was wrong. There was a medical problem that I had before
I went into the army, but they sent me anyway.
I had never had this problem before, so after being in the Army for
three days I was told that I would be going back home. I had to keep my deal with the Lord so for three
weeks I stopped my swearing, but then it was back to “normal.” After going back to my job they checked me
for the medical condition and it was gone, never to return again.
In late 1972 I went to visit a friend
in Florida. It was a last minute
decision, so I had to stop over in Atlanta.
While in the Atlanta airport a young couple began to speak to me about
what the Bible really had to say about the end of the world. This was very interesting to me, and it
relieved my fears a bit, but did not stop the habit of swearing.
In January of 1974 I went back to
visit my friend in Florida, and I must confess that my motives were not good in
going there. My friend gave me a series
of cassette tapes by a man named Hal Lindsey that were about what the Bible
said about how the world was going to end.
I listened to one each day and it was if they were speaking right to
me. At the end of each message Lindsey
told his audience how they could have a relationship with the Lord. I followed what he said and the first thing
that I noticed was that I had no desire to swear, but I did have a desire to
read the Bible. The thing that I tried
to do on my own was taken away from me never to return again. My fears about how the world was going to end
were also gone, because I understood how it was going to happen.
In 1979 our son was born with a hole
in his heart along with a bad heart valve.
In May of 1980 at the age of 18 months the surgeons actually cut his
heart into and inserted a patch in it and put another patch near the
valve. It was the longest day of my life
to that point, but because of my relationship with the Lord there was
calmness. My son and his wife now have
three children. My question to you is if
you died today would you be 100% sure of going to heaven?
12/14/2024
9:32 PM
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