Making Final Preparations
You have been planning a vacation for months. As
the time nears for you to leave, you must accomplish several tasks. These are
what we call final preparations. It might involve calling the newspaper delivery
person to hold your paper until you get back. It might involve taking your pet
to the kennel. There are many things to do in our final preparations.
Finally, the moment arrives when you pile into the car and start out the driveway
when one of the kids informs you they have to go to the bathroom. Oh, the agony
when this happens. You might get down the road a piece and realize you forgot
to turn off some appliance. Whatever occurs in the next few minutes you realize
you did not make your final preparations soon enough.
Making final preparations occurs all the time. When we plan some event, things
must be prepared beforehand. Some people make a list of things that need to
be done. Sometimes this is good that someone would plan this way and it certainly
helps.
NASA goes through many checklists before they attempt to launch a space vehicle.
This is done for safety reasons, and there is so much money being spent that
they do not want anything to go wrong.
Even preachers have to make final preparations before they present their sermons
to an audience. Now that we understand the necessity of making final preparations,
perhaps we can turn this toward a spiritual direction.
There is going to be a final moment in your life. Are you prepared? Have you
made preparations? The answer could cause your soul peril or elation. God warns
us that we are going to die. Sure that is scary enough, but the latter part
of Hebrews 9:27 is more so. It reads "and after this the judgment".
Yes, there is a judgment awaiting each one when we will give an accounting to
God.
God is going to hold us accountable for several things. Let's list a few of
them.
Did we obey God or man? God has given us His commands. Did we follow His commands,
or turn to human reasoning? Peter and the apostles said: "we must obey
God rather than men" (Acts 5:29).
Did we treat our fellowman with honor, dignity, respect, and fairness? What
weighs heavier in our judgment is how we treat others. God takes this very seriously.
This is the subject of Matthew 25:31-46.
Did we put our trust in God? Our trust should always be in God. The very middle
verses in the Bible instruct us so (Psalm 118:8-9).
Did we treat our Christian brethren with greater honor? Galatians 6:10 reads:
"So then, while we have opportunity, let us do good to all men, and especially
to those who are of the household of the faith".
Are you studying the Bible enough to be approved of God? 2 Timothy 2:15 tells
us to be diligent in our study so that we can handle God's word properly.
Did we look to the plight of those around us and have compassion enough to warn
them of hell, and how to get to heaven?
There are many things we must do for our final preparations. Thankfully we have
until the end of our life, but we do not know when that will be. Our safest
course of action is to plan now for the end of our life, but also make plans
if for some reason our life ends before we think it should.
By Carey Scott
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