Today

We have been studying the wonderful book of Hebrews in Bible study this year. If you want to consider and appreciate and love the Lord Jesus in a whole new way, read Hebrews! It is all about Jesus. But I was so struck by the word "Today" repeated several times in chapter 3 and 4. "Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion" (3:7 and 15). "But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called 'today,' that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin (3:13). "Again, He appoints a certain day, 'Today,' saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted, 'Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.'" (4:7) Do you get the impression that "Today" constitutes a mighty important concept to the Lord?

We all know it all too well--none of us is guaranteed tomorrow. God have given us the gift of the "precious present." We have today, and He gives us the choice of how we choose to spend His gift of these 24 hours. Will we spent it worrying and fretting about tomorrow--a tomorrow we may never have? We will expend today regretting and rehashing the mistakes of yesterday? Will we completely miss the myriad gifts of today--from the piercing blue of the sky to the song of the mockingbird to the hug of a child to the beloved voice and laughter of a spouse or a parent--because we are consumed with next week or last week or even later today?

How often I have missed it! Forgive me Lord! I missed and forfeited the joy and peace and strength You had in store for me today because I of anxiety or ingratitude or fear or prayer-less striving or plain old disbelief. When God speaks to us today, His Word commands that we not harden our hearts and that we believe and obey... today. Not, "I'll think about it and maybe start tomorrow." Nope, we are to do it today. Trust today. Enjoy His presence today. Fix our eyes on Jesus today. Read His Word today. Repent and stop worrying today. Act on His prompting to encourage that individual or write that letter or call that person or deal with that habit or confess that sin. And do it TODAY.

Now, I don't know about you, but I am the grand master of "Tomorrow." I'll start cleaning out the clutter tomorrow. I'll write her tomorrow. We decide we'll start writing or reading or doing devotions with our children or encouraging our spouse or doing whatever it is that God has called us to do tomorrow. But I recently heard David Jeremiah say something so convicting on this. He stated that "today" is God's word and "tomorrow" is satan's word. When God tells us to do something, the space between hearing it and doing it doesn't belong to God but to the enemy. God calls us to do it today, but the enemy says just do it tomorrow.

What are you, what am I, doing with that space between God's Word and our acting (or failing to act) upon His Word?

The great evangelist, D.L. Moody, would often preach in locations for 4 or 5 days at a time. Whenever he preached on the first night, he would often close by telling his listeners to go him and really think about what he had told them and then to come back the next night. One night at one of his meetings in Chicago, he ended with those usual words urging the people to return the next night. Tragically, however, that October night in 1871, the Great Chicago Fire burned over 4 square miles of the city and killed hundreds of it's citizens in one of the worst disasters in this nation in the 19th century. Many in Moody's audience perished in that terrible fire and for them, there was no tomorrow night.

Moody never again asked his listeners to go home, think about it, and come back tomorrow. He had learned the power of today--and he called on his listeners to heed the voice of God, make a decision, and act on it today.

"This is the day that the Lord has made let us rejoice and be glad in it" (Ps. 118:24). Do it today. And to God, the Lord who is the same yesterday and today and forever, be all the glory.