The Next Step

I think the most common answer you will get from a group of Christians when you ask them where is God calling you next, what is your next step, the most common answer in most groups will be an honest “I don’t know”

And for those people, the ones who honestly don’t know, the answer is the easiest. If you don’t know what the next step is in your Christian life, then it is obviously to pursue a closer relationship with the Lord so that he may reveal to you that next step. So how do you pursue a closer relationship with the Lord, by going to him in prayer, by studying his word and asking him constantly for guidance in your life and then taking the time to learn to recognize his answers. Pursuing a relationship with God takes time and energy. Time that some people just can’t seem to find in the frantic pace of their daily lives. How often have we said, “I would like to spend more time in prayer and study but I just don’t have the time.”

I want you to imagine that you are able to go and visit an old friend that you haven’t been able to visit with in a long time. As long as we are just imagining lets say because of your great wealth you are able to take this old friend a million dollars in cash and just give it to him; a million dollars cash in a suitcase, and then after a good visit you are about to start the long drive home and you mention to your old friend that you could really use an extra 20 dollars for the trip home and now imagine at this point the old friend tells you that he just doesn’t have an extra twenty to spare. How are you going to feel about that old friend?

Well I want to remind you this morning that God provided each of you free of charge every second of your life that you have enjoyed on this earth and every second you continue to spend here is entirely at his pleasure. Every second you have he has given you. What are you doing with your time that is so important that we have so little left over for God?

All this important time your spending, how much of it will affect you eternal security. Tell me how will the outcome of next week’s episode of the “American Idol” affect your eternal destiny. Taking the next step sometimes can be placing priorities in our lives that are real and have real meaning. I don’t care what you have to walk away from in order to make time for a personal relationship with God. Not only should we have time for God but that time should come above everything else. Jesus made that quite clear in his teaching in Matthew 10:37-39

"Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me;

and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.

Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

Even the cost of our own lives is not to high a price to pay to take the next step.

I don’t believe that most of us will be asked to lay down our lives in order to take the next step. We may all fantasize about dying for Christ, and I am sure that in those fantasies we bravely proclaim our allegiance to Christ as we are executed for the advancement of the kingdom.