Taking the chance of a lifetime

Just hearing someone say this brings about visions of magnificent and exciting chances of living a great and rewarding life, if things go as planned.  We will often bet our lives on material things of this world, hoping to win the big prize of health, wealth and wisdom beyond measure.  We tend to overlook our chances of losing, or our chances of missing out on something because we are engulfed in the effort to take the chance of a lifetime.  We may want to re-evaluate our position in our risk-taking.  We may want to forgo any future dreams of wealth and comfort and pay more attention to the life God has blessed us with. 

One of my favorite authors, A. W. Tozer, relates his position on this betting in his book Mere Christianity.  Tozer describes Christ’s return, and gives us this warning.   “It will be too late then to choose your side.  There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up.  That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realized it before or not.  Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side.  God is holding back to give us that chance.  It will not last forever.  We must take it or leave it.”

We may want to take a look at how we place our bets.  We may want to take a good hard look at how God wants us to behave, and compare this to our actual behavior.  I’m looking at this from a personal perspective and a more global view as well.  We need to make a decision now, before it becomes too late to change, too late to become a member of God’s family.  We have no clue, as well it should be, as to when this event will take place.  Yet we continue on in our risky behavior of self-centered activities and having no regard for God’s plan for our lives.  When we do this, we give evil a definite advantage, making room in our lives for all those things that offer nothing with regards to winning our bet.  To the contrary, we work hard at increasing our possessions here on earth while diminishing our chances to celebrate a life well lived in the eyes of our Savior.  God chooses to warn us of this all through His Story, even to the end. 

“He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son. But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part will be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”  Revelations 21:7-8(NASB)

God blessed us with the gift of free will so that we could bet our lives on a life well lived, according to God’s grand design.  Instead, we choose to bet on a losing concept of greed, wealth and comfort in order to make our lives more enjoyable.

God is betting on us.  He sent His one and only Son to pay our ransom.  We do not need to blow our chances at eternal life.  We do not need to risk our promise of life ever after in order to enjoy the here and now.  There is no mystery that we actually have the chance of a lifetime to follow Him. 

“in the world, not of the world”