Jesus in the Attic

“The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9)

This morning I climbed up into the stale, dusty cold of my home’s attic to get the boxes in which my wife and I keep our Christmas decorations.    Taking hold of them, I brought them down the stairs to the living room and set them next to our dried-out Christmas Tree . Today is the day we take down our tree, pack up our decorations, and start the New Year.  We’ll pack our Christmas decorations up and put them decorations back in the attic until Christmas time comes again.  The thought crossed my mind that thousands of others are probably doing the same thing today.  How many of us are, in our minds, in effect, keeping Jesus in the attic and only getting Him down once year?  As some of my Facebook friends have pointed out this morning, today marks the 2014^th Year of Our Lord.  Christmas is not over or simply in the attic until next year.  Jesus came 2104 years ago and Jesus is alive.  We live in His mercy and under His authority every day, every year.   He is not far from each one of us and, in Him, we live, move, and exist.  He sustains the very world by the word of his power, and he is coming back to judge each one of us, the quick and the dead.

2014 marks one more year in which the Lord has delayed His judgment until the appointed time, allowing sinners to live under His good grace.  2014 marks one more year the Lord gave his disciples to preach the word, in season and out. So, this year as in all others the Lord has given to us, be ready to reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction.   In the 2014^th year of our Lord, share the gospel with the lost.  You have not been left as orphans, but in the power of the Holy Spirit.  In the Spirit’s power, go out and share the gospel to the lost.  Go out and make disciples.  In His Providence, the Lord has provided his people with many resources to do so. 

One such resource is a free, online course at New Orleans Baptist Theological seminary taught by Dr. Thomas Strong.  I encourage you to check it out and enroll.  Make some disciples in 2014.

Disciplemaking 
with Dr. Thomas Strong
Course Code: CMCM2210
Email: tstrong@nobts.edu

If you haven’t come to Christ before 2014, I implore you to do so now.  You can be as stale, dusty, and cold as my attic and as dried out as my old Christmas tree.  Take the living water of Jesus Christ and never thirst again.  Be renewed.  Be warmed by the light of the Son of God.  Be adopted as a child of the one true and living God through the forgiveness offered in the atoning sacrifice of, his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ…be forgiven.