Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
If you neglect to renew your magazine subscription, does anyone bother to remind you? Yes, you are plagued by reminders! It gets to where you simply resolve your "neglect" into what is a final choice NOT to re-subscribe. Then months later finally the publishers leave you alone.
Does the Savior love us less than those publishers who want us to re-subscribe? Hebrews asks a sober question: "How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard Him" (2:3). In other words, if we "neglect" to respond to all that the Savior has done for us, we will be lost.
You can be sure that He sends you Reminders, even more than TIME magazine reminds you to re-subscribe. They don't want to lose you; a million times more, your personal, infinitely divine Savior who endured your personal hell, doesn't want to lose you! He paid that infinite price to redeem your soul in eternal life. Will He let you be lost simply because you have been so busy doing your Christian duty to support your family working from dawn to dark that you have "neglected" the Bible study and prayer you need?
This may seem like too simple an illustration, but it's thoroughly biblical: the Savior keeps knocking at your door (Rev. 3:20), more often than TIME sends you renewal notices. When you indulge in mindless TV entertainment, the Holy Spirit pricks your conscience, reminding you of an opportunity "neglected." He will tell you over and over again that you DO have time for Heaven. If you're not very careful, it will become what that original word translated "neglect" really means: "to despise, make light of." You can see this if you compare that same word as Jesus used in Matthew 22:5 (maleo): He describes "them that were bidden" to His banquet as those who "made light of it." That's the original word for "neglect."
In God's language, the problem is more than an honest, understandable, excusable oversight; it's a day by day constant despising of that insistent "knocking." He is pleading with you to "re-subscribe." You DO hear it; you DO have time; you choose over and over to push the Holy Spirit aside. O may the Lord open our eyes to Reality as it is in these last days!
Copyright © 2009 by Robert J. Wieland.
Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.
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Daily Bread - Readings about life and the Word of God.
