The Prime of Your Life

During my years in college a man named Paul Little made a great impact on college and university students, especially by encouraging Christian young people to evangelize their fellow students with whom they attended school. In 1966 he published a book titled How to Give Away Your Faith, which became a classic. A few years later word came that he had been killed in a car accident in Canada. It was said of him as it was of others who died young that Paul Little had died in the prime of his life.
This past week I spoke at the funeral of a dear woman who had known me from the time I was 4 years of age. She and her husband were able and encouraging supporters of my pastoral ministry in the Pacific Northwest in the 70s and 80s. My sister married their son. Betty died at the age of 92 in a car accident. She was vigorous in mind and body though in her ninth decade of life. I asked at the funeral what the audience of friends and family would have considered the prime of her life to be: As a school girl in Korea where her parents were missionaries? At the age of the young picture on her memorial service program? When she married her dear husband with whom she lived 68 years? When she became a mother, or grandmother? Or so many other times in a life well lived in the faith? I told them that last Tuesday, the day the Lord took Betty home, was the prime of her life. And I told the audience TODAY is the prime of your life!
I said this because the Bible presents a gospel which is a TODAY gospel. Take the time to peruse a complete concordance and the Scripture references under the word TODAY and you will see what I am talking about. The gospel is a message for today, whenever today occurs in your life, whether this day or your today a week or a year from now, if indeed you still breathe. Every day you wake you awaken to a day which is the prime of your life, even if you are 92 and no longer 25 or 37 or 42. This is true because the Gospel message makes demands on you every today of your life. Whether or not we listen to the Lord’s voice that day, or if we harden our heart to his voice, it is the prime of your life; and it is another day of either the fleshing out of your salvation, or another day when the opportunity and the call was there but you hardened your heart to it. The Bible teaches that all your TODAYS are the day of salvation. And every today you either reaffirm your salvation in your response, OR your answer by word, thought, or deed is a hardening of heart to His voice.
The caveat especially for you Bereans, who search the Scriptures to see whether what I am saying is true, is the condition in some lives of dementia, Alzheimers, or diminished conscious capacity for one reason or another. Frankly, I do not completely understand this occurrence in the life of the saints. I understand the physical aging process, but not the spiritual aspect of it. One day we will see clearly God’s purpose here. But if this is not your condition, and you would not be reading this if it were, this caveat presents no means of escaping the truth of the claims and demands of the gospel upon you. The living Word of God still says to you, “Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your heart.
Today, the prime of your life, what will your answer be? As Joshua of old challenges us, “Choose TODAY whom you will serve, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord!