The Lord Is Ready

THE LORD IS READY

ISAIAH 38.20

18 For the grave cannot praise thee, death can not celebrate thee: they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth. 19 The living, the living, he shall praise thee, as I do this day: the father to the children shall make known thy truth. 20 The LORD was ready to save me: therefore we will sing my songs to the stringed instruments all the days of our life in the house of the LORD.

A day is coming in every person’s life when we will face death. If Christ does not return to gather His church, all of us here will eventually die. Ecclesiastes 11.3 where a tree falls there it shall be. So too is the condition of man. When we face death, all of our decisions concerning eternity are settled. There will be things we remember, there will be things we regret, but nothing about what we have done here on earth can ever be changed.
As we consider the thought of eternity, there is something else we must consider: out eternal state. There are only two options. There is Heaven, and then there is hell. Each person chooses where he or she will spend eternity. Each person makes that decision for themselves. I cannot make it, your parents cannot make it, and your children cannot make it. We choose for ourselves.
We also choose how we will live our lives here on earth. Whatever our choice is, if we choose to live a miserable, bitter, downtrodden life, if we choose to not allow God to do all for us He desires to do, or if we choose to remain lost and spend eternity in a hell prepared for Satan and his wicked crowd, we will be forced to look back and say, “The Lord was ready, but I was unwilling!”

I.  TO SAVE.
          A. Isaiah said the Lord was ready to save Him therefore He would sing                 God’s praises His whole life. The Lord is ready to save all of us, if we                    would but allow Him to save us. We must relinquish control of our lives                      to Him, we must relinquish our right to ourselves & allow Him to have                complete control.
          B.  Felix told Paul he would call Him again when he had a more convenient                    season to hear about this matter of salvation. Agrippa said almost thou                hast persuaded me to be a Christian. As far as we know, neither was ever                     saved. They will spend all of eternity with the remembrance that the Lord                        was ready to save them & give them an eternal home in Heaven instead of             eternal torment in hell.
          C. Felix, Agrippa, & all who reject Christ will spend eternity with the cry,                      “the Lord was ready to save me, but I was unwilling to receive it!”

II. TO BLESS.
          A.  God wants to bless His children, but so often, we do not want to be                  blessed. We hold bitterness in our hearts, we are judgmental, envious,                    prideful, unloving, selfish, stubborn, & many, countless other things that                    hinder God’s blessing in our lives.
          B.  Not only does our selfish, prideful behavior hinder God’s blessings in                        our lives, but it hinders it in our church. When we allow our petty                           feelings to get in the way of what God is doing, we are accountable for                 that.
          C. We miss blessings because we do not read the Bible and pray. These are                     the ways in which God speaks to us. As we pray, we get our hearts in                   condition to allow God to speak to us. As we read, the Bible speaks         to us                from God’s own heart.
          D.  I would hate to go into tomorrow knowing the Lord was ready to bless                      me, and I missed it because of unfaithfulness, pride, selfishness, the                        harboring of a broken relationship, bitterness, or whatever reason.
          E.  God is ready to restore a broken relationship, ready to heal a broken                marriage, ready to remove a bitter spirit, ready to break the yoke of                       selfish pride, ready to bless you in ways you cannot even imagine. The                    question is “are you willing for God to bless you?”

III. TO DELIVER.
          A.  Isaiah  61:1 “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; b/c the Lord hath                        anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to                     bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the                    opening of the prison to them that are bound.”
          B.  The Lord is ready to deliver us. If we are bound by sin, if we are bound                      by addiction, if we are bound by the flesh, the Lord is ready to deliver us.              We relate these things to the lost world, and that is true, but it also                               happens to Christians. We get bound by addictions to certain things. For                        some it is alcohol, some it is prescription drugs, some it is other kinds of                drugs, some it is hobbies, some it is thrill-seeking, but these things rob us                 of spiritual well-being, & spiritual blessings.
          C.  The Lord is ready to deliver us, if we are willing to be delivered. We                   must simply turn it all over to Him, and allow Him to have it.