This is a Test; This is Only a Test

Hello! I'm sorry that I've not posted lately. I've been nesting. We have been redecorating and it's been taking all my time!

Anyhoo.

The other day, as I was driving, I was thinking. [I love to drive in silence so as to have peace and quiet and time to think.] I had heard about a lady who knew she was dying and decided to make tapes for her daughter to play at each milestone of her life. For instance, when the daughter turned 16, she could play the tape and hear her mother's advice for that stage of her life.

As a side note: You can bet that at 16 if the mother was still alive and giving her advice, she would be "tuned out!"

Of course, with the imagination that God has gifted me, I immediately began to wonder what I would say to each of my children on my deathbed.

Oh, my! It was so sad! I was blinking back tears as I imagined it. [It's very easy for me to imagine myself right into a depression.] But once I got past the drama of the thing, I realized the main thing that I would say to each of them:

This is a test; it's only a test.

This life that God has gifted each of us is a test for eternity. We are eternal souls and, like it or not, we will live forever. The question is ... WHERE will we live?

Will we live with God, a God who loves us and wants to make us more like Him? Or with a wannabe god who never had our best interest at heart; in fact, with someone who has always hated us?

The choice seems pretty simple to me.

In light of that choice, our present life of scrambling to get status, of trying to live the American dream, of wanting to make a mark in this present world seems less important.

Don't get me wrong: it is important to work and to achieve. The bible says that we are created in Christ Jesus to do good works [see Ephesians 2:10]. The bible also has much to say about laziness. [God is against it.]

However, our focus must be on maintaining our relationship in Christ.

I once saw Joyce Meyer do an illustration on this topic which really made an impression on me. She told us that the bible says our life is only a mist or vapor.

"What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes." James 4:14

Then Joyce stood on stage and sprayed something from a can. [I think it was hairspray.] That puff of spray vanished mighty quickly! There's not much time to do anything before the spray is gone.

So, if I were dying, I would say to each of my girls, "Don't be bitter, or waste time blaming God or other people for the things that go wrong in your life. You're only hurting yourself when you do. Instead, accept what happens in your life as an experience from which God wants you to learn. Your job is to believe God and His word. Accept what He has done for you. Focus your energies on Him and His sacrifice for you so that you may pass the Test."

Hmmm...I don't have to be dying to say that!