Friday, August 24, 2018

August 25, 2018

"Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a member of the Jewish ruling council. He came to Jesus at night and said, "Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him." John 3:1-2


As a man, I hate to ask for directions. I am not exactly sure why that is. A little research threw a little light on the query. Here is one person's theory:


"It is important to understand that men are NEVER "lost." To him, that implies a helplessness that he will never willingly experience. He simply hasn't gotten there yet and he has complete faith in his ability to do so.


Also, a man's unwillingness to stop and ask for directions is consistent with his survival instincts and actually not stubborn at all. First, the act of stopping the car, and rolling down the window, makes him (and you) more vulnerable than he is willing to be just to get some place faster.


Second, from a man's point-of-view, the moment he asks a gas station attendant, or someone on the street, for directions, he has put his life and yours in the hands of a stranger! Men, wisely, only put their lives in the hands of people who have proven themselves trustworthy. The way he sees it, you are both better off searching for your location yourselves than being at the mercy of the judgment of someone he doesn't know and trust." Alison Armstrong


That sounds good to me!


Mind you it is one thing to be unsure of your location in your SUV on a country road somewhere and quite another to be totally clueless about your eternal destination. You can recover from being temporarily lost but when you are lost for eternity - IT IS OVER!


I give Nicodemus a great deal of credit. He was a proud man and a very religious man. His entire life had been devoted to studying the Law and the Prophets. This man was a knowledgeable in all 632 Levitical regulations and all their applications. All the people he hung out with were just like him in terms of knowledge and expertise. But Nicodemus was different in a very important and admirable way. He knew he was lost and wasn't afraid to asking for directions.

He knew enough about religious to recognize that religion is not enough! He understood that it is not WHAT you know but it is WHO you know.


Let me ask you, "If you were to die tonight do you know for sure you would go directly to Heaven to be with God eternally?"

I am not asking you, "Are you religious?" Nicodemus was religious but he also recognized he was spiritually lost - eternally lost! He had an urgency to do something about that. You should have an urgency about that as well!

As you read this and as you, like Nicodemus, honestly recognize that you are unsure about your eternal destination will you face it with the same sense of urgency he did? And will you do what he did? Will you look to Jesus for the directions to get to Heaven? Will you humble yourself to accept His Way? That would be wise since He IS "the Way, the Truth, and the Life and no one comes to the Father except through Him."