It's a new day

New every morning
Lamentations 3: 23. They are new every morning, great is thy faithfulness.
Ps 100: 5. The LORD is good and his mercies are everlasting

If you are not a morning person and you are just like me, this piece of blog will be great for you. I have always been a night person. God has always given me great messages to preach while I was showering or going to bed, then I had to stop and write everything down before I would forget. Well, On a Sunday, 24th of January 2010 God gave me a breeze of thought that changed my mind. On this day my wife would go to work at 7am and I was to take her to work and later on (8:45am) I would go to church. The night before we had prepared almost everything as always, and everything was going on as planned. He would get up at 6:30am, shameful enough, we wouldn’t have time to anything but to dress up and get in the car. No breakfast, no prayer, nothing. We just got used to this lifestyle. For years I would stop and pray and do my readings about 9am when I was already working (what a bad example and model I’m being now, but remember, that’s past now).
Well, it was supposed to be normal day, but not that one. God had decided to change something as usually He does, out of the blue, no warnings, nothing. To start with, I didn’t get to sleep much. Although I don’t sleep more than 6 hours per day, that night was a bit too much, because I went to bed at almost 2:30am. Why? Because I was writing a series God had given to me while showering the night before, doing the draft. Just for the records, my plans were to finish showering and go to bed and watch either “the king of the queens’ or “LOST” but I was interrupted by God (which I love when He does) and the plans didn’t quite work out the way I wanted. Wasn’t it what Jesus said? “ Thy will be done ”Mt 26:42 and Lk 11:2. So let’s live what we preach.
Enough for the introduction let me tell you what happened that morning. My wife’s phone went off about 6:15am and as I heard it I lost any drop of sleep I would still have, but as you know me, it takes some attempts for me to listen the voice of God so I forced myself to a 10min nap, but then when the phone went off again that was it. I was awake for sure and I felt God trying to tell me: Behold and think about the morning, what happens when you wake up, what happens with the day, delight yourself in the beauty of a new day and then you write what comes to your mind so I will inspire you. Well, here is what I came with:
Isn’t it great the feeling of having another day? Think about how many people didn’t make it! The ones who didn’t make it but went to be with the LORD that day are certainly better than us, however, there were probably thousands if not millions of people who didn’t make it to that day, didn’t make it to today and went to eternal life without God, which is terrible. And those are the ones we should be worried about. When we wake up, we are given a currency and believe it or not, we are all given the same amount of this currency called time. That is the most precious gift you could ever receive, and you receive it every single day (when you make it to the day at least). We may not deserve it, but as we read in the first passage of Lamentations 3:23 His mercies renew every morning and that’s why He gives it to you. The question is not whether you get it or not, but what are you doing with this currency? See, in this matter, God work as a investor and in this parable where He is the investor you are the bank/funds/hedges/savings account/shares take it as you wish. The point I’m trying to make is: God is a extremely radical investor, He requires daily returns over His investments because He is the one taking the risk. You do nothing apart from receiving the investment (time) and He takes all the risk. He is so radical that He said: “Ok, in order to make this work I’ll put some investment upfront, even before you could ever think about the investment He was going to make in you” And that investment was Jesus. He offered to you and me, FREE, the benefit of having our salvation. And what does He want back? YOU. Simple as that, once you have matched that investment He made upfront (Jesus) He starts another process. He separates you from the ones who are not trained in the market. Yeah, do you get this analogy? Time (the currency) is given to everyone, regardless his or her creed, beliefs, race, origin. It doesn’t matter, God invests in everyone and surely requires the return, sooner or latter, from everyone, that’s why the bible says we all will settle accounts with Him individually. Well, continuing, He separates you form those who are not trained in the market, meaning, those who do not know how to invest the currency (time). They spend their time doing meaningless things, things maybe for their own benefit, but to us, He has given instructions and has instructed us how to invest the currency. There is a great instruction guide called bible, you can try to make it on your own or you can read the book, learn the instructions, remember you will always fall short even knowing the whole bible, but by GRACE, He will keep giving you insights and instructions. So I want bring this first point to and end with this question: If the investor comes to settle accounts with you now, He is making any progress or wasting his investment? If He is wasting His investment, be sure He has all the rights to change banks so He can take away what He has given you besides the time, maybe your talents, influence, fame, money or whatever it is that you have and transfer to someone else (another bank/funds/hedges more profitable) Read Mt 25:15 onwards and you will understand this perfectly if you look from this perspective. Or, for worst, He may decide to cease the operations from your bank because He just got “tired”(just a way of speaking because God never gets tired) of wasting His investments and doesn’t want to invest anymore, which means that tomorrow, if you are not making any good with the currency He has given you, you may not make it to the next day. Think about it.
But this blog was about the new mornings, and that’s why I love to write my sermons, this way, I can always increment and you and I only benefit from it.
Continuing: the second thing it came to my mind about the mornings and process of waking up was the wonderful feeling of breaking into darkness in bringing life to what was dead. Making something from things that were not. Let’s put it this way for the purpose of illustration: When you go to sleep, you get into a stand by mode, where some of the features of the body are decreased to a certain level, some people may say that you are temporarily off until the next morning. Based on this: What is it that makes your body realize you have slept enough and now it is time to wake up? What is it that makes the day irresistibly comfortable to wake up to? Well, some people may change the day for the night because of their jobs, but they are the only ones who can tell you that it is definitely not the same. We were made to live in the light (day) and avoid the darkness (night). That’s why God separated day and night. And for this He designed a whole system with the sun and the moon and He made our planet rotate around itself and around the sun, so during a period of the day it would be clear, light, warm, comfortable and during the other it would be night. And the reason why He did it this way is because He knew we would have to rest. Now just want to make a point on the sovereignty of God. He created day and night before He created man and woman (Adam and eve). When He created Adam and eve, He wanted them to be eternal, immortal, like we are going to be in heaven. If they were to be eternal, they wouldn’t need any night, why? Because at least as far as I concern, the new Jerusalem will not rotate around any star like the sun. Well, I didn’t have any vision as John had in the book of revelation, but I assume John was so in awe with the moment that He wouldn’t notice if the new Jerusalem was rotating around anything, however He says there was no need of sun because the glory of God was the light of that place. But that is not the point, the reality is, even thou God didn’t want Adam and Eve to sin, He already knew that was going to happen, so He designed day and light for the generations to come. The sovereignty of God is present since the creation of the world, and based on this I can be sure He already had planned my path since before the creation of the universe. That’s interesting isn’t it?
Now, back to the point of breaking into the new. I find it amazing when I wake up now and the feeling of starting a new day flourish inside of me. And now for some reason I feel bad for those people who are always trying to escape for a little nap during the day. I know it is a awesome feeling to have a little nap after lunch, but come one, God already designed a time for us to rest, don’t waste more of your precious time sleeping. Make the math: If you take a nap of 1 hour per day during 60 years of your life it means that you slept 21900 hours which equals about 912 days or 2.5 years. Now could you enjoy in 2.5 years of your life that you would be missing? Maybe a university degree, maybe travelling around the world… And how many people take a nap longer than 1 hour? You do the math yourself. Time is an expensive currency. We all are given the same amount. You have to use it. If you don’t use it you can’t save, you can’t get it back. You can’t save any for the future. You have got to use it now. Now is the time to do whatever you think you should, because tomorrow may not be, and yesterday is gone, you can’t turn back the hands of time. Curious thing for you, reverse the word NOW and you do you get? You get the word WON the past tense for the verb “to win”. That’s what it means, when you act now, you win.
I actually had lots of more things to write about this, however, I know it’s pretty hard to read more than 1 page already, specially on the internet, and if I keep writing things here, you will spend to much time in front of your computer and I would be shooting my own here, going against my beliefs. So, Get out of there and go do something productive with your time.
I’ll see you next time! God bless you and give you wisdom to work with the investment He has made on you! Have a great week!
Pedro