What Are You Going To Do? (New Year’s Sermon)

Why? Because the Psalms are loaded with information to help us live the Christian life.

One of the things we all need help with is how to deal with the differences we have with each other.

We all have many differences.

Illus: Mayor Giuliani, of New York city, was honored for his leadership before leaving office in 2001. He said that in his estimation, the reason that New York City is considered by some as the greatest city in all the world is because New York city is the gateway for people from all over the world, to enable them to come and fulfill their dreams.

He went on to say that regardless of RACE or RELIGION, they can come to this great land and make a good life for themselves and their families.

But New York City does not have any special claim on diversity. Many of the cities of America today are like this. These cities are filled with all kinds of RACES and RELIGIONS.

At the close of next year we will still have our many differences, but we still will have one thing in common: we all have the same amount of time each day.

At the close of next year, no one can say, “That’s not fair, my days were only 12 hour days and his days were 24 hour days.”

God gives us all the same amount of time each day.

• Each day has twenty four hours in it

• Each hour has sixty minutes in it

• Each minute has sixty seconds in it

If we are blessed and live this coming year, 200____, our TIME will be divided into:

• Months

• Weeks

• Days

• Hours

• Seconds

• Moments

If God gives us another year, we have to decide what are we going to do with those 365 days.

As Christians, we know immediately that if we are a child of God that loves the Lord, then out of that 365 days:

• There will be fifty-two Sundays for worship. As Christians who love the Lord, we know these days will be set aside to worship the God and Savior that we love above ANYONE or ANYTHING else. This takes care of 52 of the 365 days God will give us.

• There will be fifty-two Wednesdays in which we will work, but in the evening, we will have our families in the mid-week service, seeking spiritual strength and guidance.

But that will give us 261 days remaining in this year, and we are going to have to decide what we are going to do with them.

As we enter this New Year, the most foolish among us are those who live their lives with no plans to do something with the gift of time that God gives them.

Illus: They are like a ship’s Captain who is going to take a voyage but does not have the slightest idea where HE IS or WHERE HE IS GOING.

Illus: This saying was found on a Sundial.

Haste traveler! The Sun is sinking now.

He shall return again--but never thou.

(Robert C. Shannon, 1000 Windows, (Cincinnati, Ohio: Standard Publishing Company, 1997).

This is so true. The sun will return to make that circle again, but we do not have the assurance that when it returns again, we will be here to see it.

We must seize this moment and take advantage of every precious day that God blesses us with.

Moses, in Psalm 90, gives us some things we should do as we approach this coming year.

I. RECOGNIZE THE TIME GOD GIVES US

Look at verse 10, we read, “The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.”

I want to give you some shocking news this morning. It is something that many in this congregation do not know. Some do, but many do not!

WHAT IS IT PREACHER?

Based on the Word of God, I need to tell you, YOU ARE NOT GOING TO LIVE FOREVER!

We have people today who seem to think they are going to live forever. I am preaching to some today whose lives reflect that they seem to think that death is 10, 20, or 30 years from now. But how foolish to live such a life, because death may be standing at their door, and may soon enter.

Illus: Dr. Odell Belger tells of visiting a retired gentlemen who was sick in bed. The thing that caught his attention in the conversation, was that this old, retired man, who was unsaved, was laying in the bed talking about what he planned to do in 20 or 30 years. But within six months he was dead and buried!