Ecclesiastes 12:10

  I recently read a great piece of advice: “ Be hard on yourself in the morning and easy on yourself at night.”   The idea is that at times we keep ourselves up at night beating ourselves up over what we didn’t do, yet we often let the opportunities that are there slip away in the morning.   It's about regret. We usually can’t do anything after the fact. The best way to eliminate regret is to kill it before it is born. Procrastination seems like a solution in the moment, but it's a drain for the future.   Proverbs 3:27-28 says, “ Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to do it.  Do not say to your neighbor, "Go, and come back, and tomorrow I will give it," When you have it with you”.   If we act when we can, we won’t have to be so hard on ourselves later.

   American poet John Greenleaf Whittier, who once noted, “ For of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: It might have been. ”   Regret often is more about what we didn’t do than what we did. When we do it, it brings joy. When we don’t, it brings regret. Shoulda, Woulda, Coulda are bad words. “Going to do” leads to a life with nothing done.  Doing nothing might just be the worst thing you've ever did.   But it's worse than all that; it might just be a sin. Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it, to him it is sin . James 4:17   Not doing the right thing is wrong! Putting off what needs to be done is as sinful as any wrong act we might perform. It won’t just make us miserable, it makes us lost.    There will be many on judgment day that will cry out “What did we do?” They will have their answer. They didn’t do anything. They didn’t obey. They didn’t follow through. They didn’t do the thing ...

    In Mark 6, Jesus goes back to his home town. By this time, his fame was at an all-time high. The crowds were swamping him.   When Jesus spoke in his home synagogue they were “ astonished, saying, "Where did this man get these things, and what is this wisdom given to Him, and such miracles as these performed by His hands?”     Yet, the text tells us they took offense at him. Why?     It was because they knew him. Maybe better said they were used to him.   They had seen him grow up. They knew his brother and sisters. His father had done carpentry work for them. He was too ordinary to be something so special.     Familiarity breeds contempt.   I am always amazed at how things can get overlooked when we get used to them.   A bad paint job, a junky entryway, a stain on the carpet would be balked in a new environment but we get used to it in our own place. We don’t see what we should see because we’ve just got...

   In the twenty-fourth chapter of Acts we read of a sermon that was delivered to Felix; But some days later Felix arrived with Drusilla, his wife who was a Jewess, and sent for Paul and heard him speak about faith in Christ Jesus. But as he was discussing righteousness, self-control and the judgment to come, Felix became frightened and said, "Go away for the present, and when I find time I will summon you." Acts 24:24-25   Although Felix was just looking for a payday (vs 26) this sermon seemed to have an effect on him.  It probably bothered him since Felix didn’t have much self-control and wouldn’t seemly fare well in the judgment to come.  Felix was there with his third wife Drusilla, a woman he had seduced away from her first husband.  These convoluted marriages seem to be all the rage in these ruling circles (Mark 6:17),  but the truth Paul preached didn’t jive with this type lifestyle.  So Felix sent him away for a mor...

    In my first job as a youth minister I took the kids on a picnic . We filled an ice chest with drinks and sandwich fixings and spent the afternoon at a local park.  After I got home later that night I was too tired to clean out the ice chest so I set it on the back patio and proceeded to forget about it for the next couple of days. After four or five days in the hot Texas sun, I remember I need to clean out the ice chest. It was then and there I learn that there are something that should never be put off .     Proverbs 3:27-28 tells us:   Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, When it is in your power to do it.  Do not say to your neighbor, "Go, and come back, And tomorrow I will give it," When you have it with you .     Don't put off opportunities to do good. Don't wait till you get around to it. There are not any round to it’s. Someday isn't on any calendar. As George H. Lorimer puts ...