How we VIEW life on earth drastically affects how we will LIVE life on earth. If we only have fleshly, physical eyesight we will see a baby born and an elderly person die and will think to ourselves, “This is it – this is all there is to life”. It will influence us to go for all the gusto we can in this life because when it’s over – we’re like Rover – dead all over. But, if we have spiritual eyesight, we will see life from birth until death as only the beginning.
Paul writes in II Corinthians 4:16-5:1 “Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands”.
It takes humility and honesty to examine the evidence for or against Jesus and the eternal life He alone provides. It is arrogance, cynicism and dishonesty that blinds people to the life Jesus provides in the spiritual realm in the hereafter. Arrogance makes us ignorant and cynicism makes us blind. Most people spend their entire life denying, dismissing and dethroning Jesus from His rightful position as God the Son who created the world (including us) and brought us salvation. Most people wait until their deathbed and then frantically make a feeble attempt at claiming they believe in Jesus, hoping their trashy trust in Jesus will stick against the wall of salvation.
TODAY is the day of salvation. We need to believe in God’s grace and let His love move us to repent and be buried with Christ in baptism. We need to rise up to a new life of living for Jesus for the rest of our lives. Every day we are renewed and should say, “This is only the beginning”. Every day we look toward our home in heaven and say, “This is only the beginning”.
Read Matthew 7:13-14,21-28 and listen to Only the Beginning by Downhere.
Matthew 7:13-14
Matthew 7:21-28
“Therefore, everyone who hears these words of Mine, and acts on them, will be like a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock. And everyone who hears these words of Mine, and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell—and its collapse was great.”
When Jesus had finished these words, the crowds were amazed at His teaching;