A reminder

It happened again just the other day, I was walking to the garage, I had a paint brush in my hand, a can opener in one pocket, ziplock baggies in another pocket and I suddenly stopped walking, I was about half way between the garage and the ladder I had just been climbing up and down. I stopped because I had forgotten why I was walking to the garage. I knew I was painting but I had come to get something, what was it, a tool? How much time should I waste standing there trying to remember? I decided to go back to where I had been to see if something would jog my memory. Sure enough, it only took a couple of steps to think back through what I had been doing, painting, I was doing the window frame, I stopped because I saw… loose paint! Scraper! I came for a scraper! Yes! Exciting! I remembered!

I hope you can relate to my mental lapse and the process of recovering my mission. I am getting older. I will tick over onto a new group of numbers with my next birthday, from my fifties into my sixties. That’s a lot of birthdays. A lot of birthdays means a lot of life and stuff are packed away in my cranium. My thoughts can get distracted as my mental synapses wade through the memories to get to the main things.

That was a long introduction to my bible reading. The chapter I read this morning isn’t where I ended up. I started in 2 Corinthians 12 but I bounced around and found myself back in chapter 5 of the same book.

I thought it might be worth sharing. In this current COVID-19 climate where everything is uncertain, we recently got an order to wear masks and i was ready to comply but then I read an article written by a nurse about the strain wearing a mask puts on a body and now? I don’t know. Everything is so uncertain. Who do we trust? Who do we obey? What’s my favorite color? Wait what? That’s how my brain is responding to all this chaos, it’s getting discombobulated.

I am a believer in Jesus. As a believer, my mission and purpose never change. One reason for that is that God never changes. He is the same, yesterday, today and forever.

Paul summed it up in 2 Corinthians 5.

“And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!” For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.”
2 Corinthians 5:18-21 – NLT

As a believer in and follower of Jesus I have one job to do. Reconciliation. I am to plead with those who don’t know yet, to come back to a God who loves them. Come back to God! All is forgiven in Jesus. Our relationship with our Heavenly Father has been restored!

I end with this, if you my reader are a follower of Jesus, don’t let the current situation distract you from our mission, reconciling a lost world to our God and savior. Go tell someone, better yet show someone how much God loves them.

If you my reader have yet to meet Jesus, just let me tell you this about him he has died to meet you. It’s okay, he came back to life and now lives forever. He left briefly to prepare a place for us and will return someday, possibly soon, to gather his followers up to be with him. You can join us. If you confess with your mouth, Jesus Christ is Lord, and believe in your heart that he rose from the grave, you will be saved.

“If you openly declare that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God, and it is by openly declaring your faith that you are saved.”
Romans 10:9-10 – NLT

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