How will you respond?

"People today, often young people, think that it is all right for them to go their own way as long as they go God's way at some later point. They want to have fun now and serve God later - when they are too old to be of much use or when their opportunities for solid preparation are gone. Granted, it is better for them to sin now and repent later than for them to sin now and not repent at all. But the best way is to come to Jesus early and serve him both early and late. It is best to give your entire life to his service. Besides, if you delay now, you have no guarantee that you will be able to come to Jesus later, you may, but sin takes its toll, and one of the things sin does is trap us so that we cannot get free even it we want to, and usually we do not even want that freedom. If God is speaking to you and you are saying no, you should know that although it may be hard for you to say yes now, it will be even harder to say it the next time around - even assuming that God speaks to you again. The only safe thing is to give prompt and sincere adherence to God's call."

This rather long quote came in some reading I have been doing lately and it really reminds me of the passage from MAtthew 6:24 that is talking about serving two masters, something you can not do. You can not live for fun and self, and still live for Christ. The two are opposite, not compatible in any way other than when you are living for Christ those things which we are lead to do become the things we love and enjoy doing - and they are far better than those things which we do on thoughtless impulse when God is not added into the equation. It is so hard to live continuously in the will of the Father, but that leads me to one more quote which I have recently come across in some reading that I will leave you with (This one from William Wilberforce),

"Above all, let us guard against the temptation, to which we are all susceptible, of lowering our standards to match our lives, rather than raising out lives to match our standards. Let's be honest with ourselves and find out the worst about ourselves; when we do, we should allow the knowledge to move us emotionally. We shouldn't try to immediately smother the pain we feel with a sense of false peace, but instead we should patiently carry around with us a deep conviction of our ineptitude and failure, a realistic sense of our weakness and infirmities. This cannot be an unhealthy state of mind for those who are commanded to 'work out their salvation with fear and trembling.'"

(This does not mean that we walk around moping and feeling bad about ourselves, but that we hold a realistic view of who we are in relation to God as fallen humans who are constantly in need of Him. We work out our faith - not that we are saved through such works - by working out where we need Christ more in our lives. Through dealing with struggles rather than hiding from them, and for this there is a season as there are seasons for all things, the pain does not last for ever but it is important to allow it to sink in in-season rather than try to hide from it and miss what God would say to you through it...the post underneath this one goes more into that. Sorry there is so much, but I thought breaking it into two posts would make it easier to read psychologically.)