I'm at the stage in life where I
have more friends out of this world than
in it.
I've been to a lot of funerals.
I've seen a lot of corpses laying in
coffins.
The figure lying there, which was once animated
with a life force and personality, now is
silent, motionless, cold, lifeless.
It will happen to you, friend, sooner or
later.
There'll be you there in that casket, with
your friends and family mourning you.
How you spent your life for God and
how you lived your life for Christ will
be all that matters when they stick you
in the cold, dark ground.
When it is all said and done and
a gravestone has your name on it, were
you consumed with this present world and its
enjoyments or were you consumed with Christ and
the gospel?
It may not mean much to you now
while you have a mortgage and a car
and material things, but all that will be
dust to you then, things you can't take
with you into eternity.
All you can take with you into eternity
are souls.
Did you labor for the souls of men
while you were here?
Some of you say, well, that's the preacher's
job, not mine.
You're dead wrong, friend, if you think you
have no accountability for the spread of the
gospel with your life while you had breath
in your body.
How many tracts did you hand out in
your life?
How many souls did you speak to about
their soul?
How many hours did you labor in prayer
and intercession for the souls of men?
How many tears dropped on the pages of
your Bible as you yearned and ached to
be more like Jesus?
You have but a short time in which
to live to make known Jesus Christ to
your generation.
When you are called away by death, there
is no more work for you to do
here on planet earth.
Are you living every day like it is
your last?
If you knew this was your last day
on earth, how would you spend it in
light of eternity?
Every day should be lived like that, on
the out-and-out for Christ and the
gospel.
You may be an eternity, friend, before this
year is ended.
I was seated with two people, very dear
to me, at a dinner table.
They were both in their early fifties and
in good health, and within six months' time
they both were dead and in eternity.
Death comes without notice.
When death comes, it often comes suddenly and
without warning.
In Ecclesiastes we read, For man also knoweth
not his time, As the fishes that are
taken in an evil net, And as the
birds that are caught in the snare, So
are the sons of men snared in an
evil time, When it falleth suddenly upon them.
I was in a hotel in Edinburgh, Scotland,
getting ready to go have dinner, at the
home of my friend Ian Murray, when I
stepped into the shower, and I realized it
was a death trap.
It had just been waxed, and there was
nothing to hold on to.
As my feet sped up and I was
flipped upside down, out of that shower, on
my head on a concrete floor, I fell
on my head and my wrist.
My wrist was broken in the fall, but
it could have just as easily been my
neck that was broken.
I could have left this world quite unexpectedly
and suddenly.
I almost died last year in the hospital
while having routine surgery, but God spared me
for a little while longer.
You don't have the time you think, friend.
God's eyes are upon you every moment you
are in this world, and he watches what
you are doing, saying, thinking.
He is keeping a book on you, with
all your deeds written in it, whether they
be good or evil.
One day, you will stand before the King
of Heaven, and give an account of your
life to him, and how you lived it.
All that matters, friends, when we die, is
how we live for Christ Jesus.
There is a poem that's always made an
impact on me.
It's called His Plan for Me, and I
want to read it to us, friends, as
I close out this message.
Hear me now as I read this poem
to us at this time.
When I stand at the judgment seat of
Christ, and he shows his plan for me,
the plan of my life, as it might
have been, had he had his way, and
I see how I blocked him here and
checked him there, and I would not yield
my will.
Would there be grief in my Savior's eyes,
grief though he loves me still?
Would he have me rich, and I stand
there poor, stripped of all but his grace?
While memory runs like a haunted thing down
the paths I cannot retrace.
Lord of the years that are left of
me, I give them to thy hand.
Take me, and break me, and mold me
to the pattern that thou hast planned.