TAKE HOLD OF LIFE

“Lay your hold on Eternal Life”, 1Tim.6:12

There is much we can say about this. However, there is very little that people do about it. How many times have you given a thought to the fact that you need to lay hands on Life? By that you might know how serious it is for you.

Many become slack for many reasons. Some even despise life and save their efforts for the last moments. Nowadays doctrines don’t help them much either. Slack or lazy theologians have made them up to turn people slack. They have mixed personal experience to their understanding of the Bible. And it can’t be a good combination at all.

Even though there are many reasons, allow me to talk about one why people’s grip on Life becomes slack and offensive to God.

God is good to bad ones just as He is good to good ones. He is what He is all the time. He does not depend on what we do to Him or to anyone else to be good to us, unless He chooses to exhort us through our circumstances because we are His Children. Children of the Lord experience the rod more often than the average sinner does. However, humans are used by the law of their sinful nature to be good and kind to all those who do them good and are naturally inclined to be mean towards all the rest, even towards those who are passive and indifferent towards them. Now, because they are like that, they assume that is how God is as well. And when they think of God as good, they believe He will be good towards them. They shall also naturally assume that the reason why God does them good is because they are right with Him. Were they not right with Him, they believe He would be mean towards them in this present life. If this was truly so, what would we say have Job? They conclude that God would never be good to them unless they had been acceptable to Him. They have an unconscious and distorted idea about God and think of Him as they would of an average sinner and expect God to act like the average human being would.

How does this affect people? How does this hinder them from holding their grip on Life? It is very simple to understand what happens next here. Because God is good to all, either to good or even to bad ones, the human mind easily tricks people into error and vain believing. People are good towards such who are good towards them and towards such who are pleased with them. They believe they must be right with God for Him to be good towards them. But, God is not like humans. Such vain thinking leads people to believe they do not need to fix their lives with God when God is good to them. They think all is right with them already when that happens.

If God is good to you in some way, try to believe it is because He is good towards anyone and not because of you. He is good because of His character and not because of yours. Do not use the fact that God is good as an excuse not to fix your life right away, even if you are a preacher. God does not accept persons. Do not easily assume everything is right between you and Him only because He has done some good to you or even because He diverted evil from your way. Remember that the Lord won't pull the weeds out of the corn field till Judgment Day. Let’s take hold of Life and be responsible, thinking people even when God is good towards us.

If we put all we have and are into taking hold of Life, we are surely helping Life to get a full hold on us. This is why Paul says, "Lay hold of Eternal Life". However, we must never forget that Life allows us to do so because it seeks to get hold of us in every aspect of our whole living. By doing so, we often hasten times because the aim of God is to have "a prepared people" for Him. Then, our spiritual clock will be set according to God's. However, if this is the case, I mean, if we put all we have into getting hold of that Life which, by having us doing so, also gets hold of us, we must have in mind that we are putting all effort into finding the life we imagine as eternal and constant. I mean that we have our own idea of what that Life is. Therefore, when we seek to get hold of Life with all our might we must add to our efforts an openness of mind which does not mystify or hinder the proper vision of that Life God has for all of us. Our hearts must be open to change its vision about Life without losing on perseverance because of having a short or wrong idea of what Life really is. When it does not happen that way we shall surely enter the way of error and the proper ground for fanaticism will be created. Consequently, later on God will need to pull those weeds of fanaticism out of us through much pain on our part and, also, through much effort on His part.

And if God is good this way, so should we be. "Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax-collectors do the same?" Mat.5:46-48. Amen.

José Mateus
zemateus@msn.com