A couple weeks ago, I was listening to a 10 year old preaching tape in my car while going back and forth to work and school. Sometimes I get tired of listening to music while driving, so this is a good alternative. Especially since my new car only has the radio and a cassette player. So I had to dig out my old cache of preaching cassettes.
The sermon was a great message, but I started thinking about the guy preaching. My mind went back to the year he preached that particular sermon.... he was such an on-fire young man. At the time was attending Bible college, serving at church, involved in all kinds of ministries, both at school and at his home church during the summers, greatly interested in missions. He was a likable young man, was passionate about the Lord and great preacher. Humanly speaking, most who knew him saw such a great future lay in front of him.
Now, he is still serving in the church, but his passion has seemed to fade. Still a great guy, but I wonder if the fire still burns in his soul. It is not my place to judge, but it made me examine my own life.
I go back ten years and think about who I was then..... scary thought. haha Honestly, sometimes I wonder how people could stand being around me. So rough around the edges. And then my mind recollects the years between then and now. I look back at the times God was molding me. Pruning me. Putting me through the fire. All to conform me to His image. Times where I wondered why, and now can see how God used those times to draw me to Him.
I've decided I may not have started well, but I want to finish strong. I would much rather keep progressing each year and come to the end of my life and know that my passion has grown, my love for God has increased and my service never slacked, then to be a ball of fire in the beginning and slowly fade into ashes.
In Paul's words:
"Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 3:12-14)
