As I said a few weeks ago, Michael’s wedding last week put an “exclamation point” on a busy first half of the year for Cheryl & I, that included getting COVID to start the year; then a mission trip to Bulgaria, a major vacation with our grandkids to Florida, the birth of another grand baby, helping one of our kids move, and now the wedding in South Carolina. We’re glad to be home, and looking forward to just a “normal” schedule for a while! But the wedding was a big deal, and as you know, it takes a LOT of planning and preparation to bring it off: dresses and shoes and suits and dinners and table settings and money and money and money!! It was a beautiful wedding, and a great time for our whole family to be together — but something like that doesn’t just “happen;” it takes MONTHS of planning and preparation to put it all together.
The Mutina’s are going through the same thing for Madison & Jason’s wedding next month; many of you have done the same with events like that in your life. We have to prepare today, if we want an important thing like that to go well tomorrow. We know that. But do we realize the same thing is true for the things of God? If we want to see God work in our church in the days ahead, we need to prepare for it today. If we want God to work in our personal lives tomorrow, we need to prepare for it today. One of the verses we read this week, Joshua 3:5, speaks to that. It says:
“Then Joshua said to the people, ‘Consecrate yourselves, for tomorrow the Lord will do wonders among you.’”
The context here is that Joshua and the people of Israel are just about to cross the Jordan River and finally go in to the Promised Land. But God says, wait a minute! You can’t just “traipse right in”! You have to prepare yourselves for it first. And I believe we as a church are in a similar situation today — and some of us as individuals are in similar situations as well. We’re looking ahead and we think God may be about to do something in us and through us. And He MAY — but we need to realize that it won’t just “happen;” we have to prepare today, if we want to see God’s wonders tomorrow.
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