HERE IN THE REAL WORLD

IT’S THAT TIME AGAIN
(2 Timothy 4:2)

Today topped out around 100 degrees with a heat index of 120; tomorrow is suppose to be even warmer. Softball practice is in full swing. Mosquitoes as big as chickens are still out in full force and the yellow flies haven’t even begun to think of going wherever it is they go in their off season. Who would have thought that next week is the first day of volleyball season and we haven’t even begun to get ready! Who can think of fall sports in 100 degree southern heat and humidity? Today, hundred degrees and playing softball, and then just next week begins the start of volleyball; the first of our “fall” sports. This totally slipped up on me. The same thing happens to many when it comes time to be a witness for Jesus Christ.
Paul wrote to Timothy, “Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine” (2 Timothy 4:2). It wasn’t a command to preach the word now and then, or when you decided to do it; it was a command to preach the word in season and out of season. We are to be ready to at a moments notice. We never know when the situation will arise to share the Gospel.
Jesus said to “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:16). Jesus failed to define the season, meaning that the season is always open! There is never months or weeks or days or hours or seconds when we are not to be prepared to make disciples. There is no off season in the Gospel.
We have to be grounded in the Word. Paul told Timothy that “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16). We are to “reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine” using the God given, God inspired scripture that is “profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction and instructions in righteousness.” We have to spend time in that Word daily in order to be prepared for a time that we have no clue when it will arrive.
God sends us no printed schedules as to when we will have to witness. We don’t have an off season to prepare; the mission field never takes a break. We don’t have an off season to get shoulder surgery. Paul said we are to be ready in season and out. We are to always be ready with the Word of God. We are to “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Matthew 28:19). Making disciples is not just a fall sport, or a spring sport; making disciples has a year round season. The love that God has for us never goes out of season.

Bobby Cohoon
26 July 2005

TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALLGAME

Summer is here, and I couldn’t be happier. It’s time for my favorite sport, baseball, to get in swing. Nothing can be more relaxing than spending the day watching America’s favorite pastime. The crack of the bat, the peanuts and cracker jacks, all the things that make a trip to the ballpark a TRIP TO THE BALLPARK! Jesus taught us, “For every tree is known by its own fruit” (Luke 6:44). Jesus went on to say, “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). What better place than a crowded ball park to let your light shine and to let the fruit of your tree be known. Remember, baseball hall of famer Yogi Berra once said, “You can observe a lot just by watchin’.”

Talking about the New York Yankees, Berra once said, “We made a lot of wrong mistakes.” Man has made a lot of wrong mistakes. God put in place the “law” which has pointed out these mistakes. The law made us conscious of our sin, our wrong mistakes. Paul said, “Therefore by the deeds of the law no flesh will be justified in His sight, for by the law is the knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20). There was no power to save in the law; the law only pointed us to our need of a Savior. Berra said, “You’ve got to be careful if you don’t know where you are going because you might not get there.” Under the law man would not get there.

But what the law couldn’t do, with the advent of Jesus, we had a savior that could do it! Yogi said, “If you come to a fork in the road take it.” Man was headed down the wrong road. But that road had a fork in it with the appearance of Jesus. Man had to repent, to change directions. Now, unlike under the law, man had a Savior who led to life. Jesus was the life. Jesus even told which way to go on the road, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:16). Now when we come to the fork in the road and realize we need to change directions, we know which way to go.

One of the more profound sayings that Yogi said was, “It gets late early out here.” Nobody knows the hour and day when Christ will return, but we know that the time is near. Paul said in I Corinthians 7:29, “But this I say, brethren, the time is short…” And the apostle John wrote in Revelation 22:10, “And he said to me, “Do not seal the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is at hand.”

Someone once asked Dale Berra if he was like his father. His response was, “Our similarities are different.” Isn’t it time to make your similarities closer to those of the Father? It’s getting late early here, are you prepared? Is today the day you decide to follow the one true God?