“Behold, I am coming soon!  My reward is with me, and I will give to everyone according to what he has done.  I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.” (Revelation 22:12)

“I am sorry, but you have no more than six months to live.”

What would you do if you received such a word from your doctor?

I heard about a man who immediately quit his job and decided to cross off everything on his bucket list. (For our readers who may not be familiar with the term, it refers to a list of things a person wants to do before they “kick the bucket”, i.e. die).

So, he and his wife did such things as travelling around Europe, skydiving, taking a cruise, etc. and made it back home just in time for him to breathe his last.

Would they have done all of that in such a short period of time had he not received his “death sentence” from the doctor? Absolutely not.

The fact that they had an, er, deadline, to work with motivated them to get all of these things done that under normal circumstances would have taken a number of years, if not decades.

That, my friends, is The Urgency Factor at work.

The Christian life is a journey that is meant to be lived with a sense of urgency.

In the first place, it is because we are born with an “expiry date” that is unknown to us. As we read in James 4:14: “You do not know what will happen tomorrow.  For what is your life?  It is even a vapour that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.”  

More importantly, though, it is because of the promise that Jesus makes about His Second Coming in verses such as the one quoted above from Revelation 22:12.

Yet, if we are honest, we would admit that our everyday lives have not always been marked with such a sense of urgency.

We tend to live our lives as individuals and as followers of Jesus with an attitude that seems to say: “We have all the time in the world.”

We neglect our significant relationships, waste time on television and the internet, withhold forgiveness, nurse grudges, and ……………………………………. (please fill in the blanks).

We commit our time and resources to matters that do not lead to fulfilling the Great Commission to make disciples of the nations.

We are known for sniping at one another and even destroying one another with “friendly fire” rather than wage war against evil in all its forms with Holy Spirit Fire!

If Jesus were to come right now, would we want to be seen as being complacent with the Great Commission? Would we want to be caught slinging mud and shooting bullets at our brothers and sisters? Would we want Him to see us wasting time and money on meaningless pursuits?

Could it be that our lack of urgency about His coming leads to such unChristlike behaviour?

Dear DWOD friend, what would happen if you made a decision to live with the conscious awareness that you do indeed have a deadline to meet and an expiry date that could be today, tomorrow or the next?

What would happen if you chose to live as though Jesus is coming any time at all now?

Would you change the way you spend your time? Your money and other resources?

What would you do more of? What would you do less of? What would you add? What would you eliminate?

Please feel free to share your responses with the rest of your DWOD family.