If Tomorrow Never Comes!

If TOMORROW never comes!

1/9/11

Someday there will be words that go something like this; “Today we are here to remember the life of insert your name? They were love by many and will be missed”.

There are two things that I dislike about the job of a pastor; the marrying and the burying”. I often joke and say one of them is a death and one of them is a slow death. But doing a funeral is by far the least liked thing that you have to do as a pastor. The words that I began with are usually the words I say in a funeral. Someday more than likely there will be a funeral service for you that you might have planned out or you might not have had anything to do with the plans because whether you like it or not, today could be your last.

I know this is a younger church and probably most part, not many here think much about dying. I have been saying for years now that I need to get a will, so be nice to me and I might include you in it. I keep putting it off but like the title of my sermon and the hit song sung by Garth Brooks, but what “If tomorrow never comes”.

The older I get the younger I see people dying. I am not there yet, but I do catch myself looking at the obituaries in the paper and I am amazed of how many people younger than me are dying. It’s a reminder to me that each day is a gift from God. That breath that you just inhaled is a gift from God. There is not promise of another.

I am not trying to scare you; I simply am stating the facts. I have been in cases where someone knew in advance that there time on earth was limited, and there have been times that unexpectedly someone got up…went about their day as usual…and never lived to see the next day.

I think back to 9/11 that is coming up on the 10 year anniversary; I wonder how many people that lost their life that day, thought when they woke up that today could be their last. I bet none of them did. Maybe those who boarded the planes, that thought may have crossed their minds. Some people have a fear of flying and the reality is that it is much safer than riding in a car, especially one that I am behind the wheel. But thousands of people got on a plane or when to work and that was their last. Tomorrow never came.

James 4:13-14 Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit"; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.

But sense we don’t think about tomorrow never coming, we put off till tomorrow for what we should do today. There are people all the time who lose their jobs because they put off what they know they need to do because of procrastination. There are marriages that get to the point where one of the parties cannot take waiting for the change anymore, and they are done and walk out of the relationship. There are people who die every day without God; who may have intended to get right with God and planned someday to accept Him, but tomorrow never came. Never put off for tomorrow for what you can do today! Let me share with you what I would call the poison of procrastination.

First let’s consider…

WHY we procrastinate

I want everyone to think to themselves of something they know they should have done, but have yet to have started. Now ask yourself the question, why did you put it off?

There are several reasons why people procrastinate. Sometimes it’s just because we can’t make up our mind. We have several options and we just can’t seem to make up our mind, so we don’t. A more common reason why people procrastinate is fear. We are afraid of what might happen. We can’t see the future so we don’t want to take that first step. We are afraid to ask for that raise. We are afraid to get that new job. We are afraid of failure. Maybe you procrastinate because things are not perfect. We want everything just right. The problem is that we live in an imperfect world. If we don’t do anything till it’s perfect then you are not going to get much done. Sometimes we procrastinate just because of pure laziness. We know what we need to do, but are too lazy to start doing it.