The Time Is Now

As this first month of the New Year is fast going down, don’t you want to stop and have a good overhaul, a good check of where you are?

I had asked a friend to buy me a fan as she was going out to that store. She was able to buy it and I was very happy to have the fan. However, the fan stayed in the box for a while, until one day she said this to me. You need to use the fan, set it up and work it, so that if there are any defects, any problems at all, which need to be fixed, it can be returned, as the warranty will expire in a few months. Her words took me further in thought, when I heard of the warranty having an expiry time.

On this precious Lord’s Day Sunday, as we are before our Lord, at the beginning of a fresh new week, don’t you feel the urge to really stop and listen? Each of us has been given, by our Lord Jesus - Brother, Friend and Master, Saviour, Counsellor – the fan of repentance. I call it the fan, in that it is our Lord Himself, who has given us this gift of grace, whereby all our sins are taken away, wiped away, blown away, far from us. The fan, which I have sitting in a box, new and untouched, just as it came from the store, has power to blow away the stifling, oppressive heat and grant me change. Is this what I have done with the gift of the grace of repentance? Is my life burning up, shrivelling up, burdened down and oppressed by sin and the fruit of sin? Is this a present picture of your life also? This ought not to be so, because we each have been given the gift of grace of repentance. We are to be living under the works of our Powerful Lord, who is able to remove all our oppressiveness.

Will you listen to Peter, as he boldly addresses a crowd of people who have been totally amazed by a Jesus miracle, which they have just witnessed, done by John and himself, disciples of Jesus? Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord. Acts 3: 19. It is the Powerful Spirit of the Lord, who still blows out, casts out and wipes out every sin and oppression of sin from us, when we repent. Prophet Micah gives us an even more striking and captivating image of what God will be to us and do for us, who have come to our senses and return to Him in deep repentance. You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea. Micah 7: 19. The wind of the Spirit is powerful forever to blow, to push, to hurl every single sin of ours into the ocean of no return.

Note clearly! These are all promises of Almighty, Sovereign God to not just His people, but to any and every person who hears His promises and gives himself or herself over to God, as Lord and Master of their lives. This is what we all have freely received by grace, and what we must accept without any further procrastination. You ask why? It is precisely because the acceptable time is now. Will you listen to what we are advised in Scripture? We then, as workers together with Him also plead with you not to receive the grace of God in vain, for He says: In an acceptable time I have heard you. And in the day of salvation I have helped you. Behold, now is the accepted time; behold now is the day of salvation. 2 Corinthians 6: 1 – 2.

Let us then acknowledge the gift of the present and use all at our disposal to know the abundant life we have in our Lord Jesus. His Spirit is adequate enough, sufficient enough and complete enough for any need we have.

As servants of the One and Only true God and Lord know that you have been given all you need to respond with faith and trust in Him. Our responses to our God must never be tentative, in fear and anxiety, because He has already cleared the path for us. Not only that, but whatever our Lord wishes us to do for Him or be for Him, comes with its own power and strength. When we respond to our Lord, we are responding to a Master who has already given Himself to us.

In the words of a hymn written in 1861, by H. W. Baker, we testify to this truth about God’s Word.