TOPIC:“And Don't Forget to Be Ready”
“Then Jesus said unto them, My time is not yet come; but your time is always ready” (7:6)
Some time ago I was reading about an airplane crash in the Midwest. Among the rubble of the wreckage was a postcard with these words written upon it: “Dear Phoebe, Having fun and going places fast,” and then a lot of scribbling as the plane went down. That person was ushered out into eternity. One wonders if that person was ready to go.
Now some people are NEVER ready to go. I don't believe Judas was. I know both Mussolini and Hitler were not ready to meet their maker. Certainly Lee Harvey Oswald who assassinated President John Kennedy was not ready to die. It came so unexpectedly to him. Other people THINK they are ready, but in reality they are not. Peter thought he was, but he wasn't. He declared: “Lord, I am ready to go with Thee, both into prison, and to death” (Luke 22:33). But listen to these words of Jesus to Peter: “The spirit truly is ready, but the flesh is weak” (Mark 14:38). So Peter wasn't really ready to DIE for Christ.
But as we come to this man Paul he seemed to be always ready. He was a prompt man. He was quick to follow and ready to act. He was ready to hear the voice of God and ready to heed the Word of God. So using those words of our text that Jesus directed to His own brothers, “but your time is always ready” I want in the light of Paul's readiness to ask you the question: Are you a ready person? Let's find out.
To begin with, Paul was ready to be SAVED by Christ. Are you? In Acts chapter 9 when Paul, before then known as Saul of Tarsus, traveled 150 miles to Damascus in Syria to persecute Christians, he was arrested by the voice of God and confronted by the living Christ. Paul refers to this later both in his letter to the Corinthians and in his letter to the Galatians as the start of his new life in Christ.
But notice the first words to come from Paul's lips as found in verse 6: “And . . .