The Price Of Stalling Time! 7-13–25

Welcome to the word for the week. Anything that needs to be fixed will take honesty in order to even begin the fixing process. Anything that is ignored runs the possibility of being extremely difficult to fix later on and in some cases it may not be able to be fixed. Let’s look at a car engine as an example. You need to change the oil at specified times. Failure to do so will first result in the oil light coming on. Failure to respond in a timely manner can cost you a major amount with an engine flush or worse you will need a new engine. Compare the cost of a new engine to the cost of the oil change and you will see that it is thousands of dollars cheaper to change the oil. How much in your life did not have to be as bad as it ended up being? How many things could have been fixed if you would have responded sooner than you did?

Nobody likes trouble. Nobody likes things going wrong. In a perfect world this is possible but we do not live in a perfect world. Things do not always go to plan or the way we hope they will. It is called life. The issue is not the problems we face in life. The issue is what do we do about them. Looking the other way and hoping something gets better does not always work, Sure, there are those rare moments when it works out great. There are also those many moments when the problem only gets worse. Nobody likes confrontation unless they also like drama and confusion. Trouble can be stressful and very unnecessary. Trouble can also be what builds you, strengthens you, and teaches you how to depend on God. Yes, we are going somewhere this week and here is the point. You cannot say you really know God until you have gone through something that only He can do and if He did not get involved it would not happen. Let me repeat that, you cannot know God until you have known Him through trouble.

We are bound to fall and make mistakes many times over the course of our lives. There is no way to get around that because we are not perfect. We serve a perfect God but unfortunately we do not always lean on Him as we should. We make decisions without Him, go places without knowing if He said go, and do things that have nothing to do with Him. We are super capable of getting ourselves in a real mess and the truth is that it is not always comfortable going to God after the fact. This is the moment that things will either get better or worse. First, our pride must die before we even go to God. Second, we must be willing to be honest when we go to God. If it makes a difference that Moses needed to remove his shoes before God then what else do you really think matters to Him? Going to God early is the difference of things turning around for the better or getting far worse than they are. You need to see the need to immediately go to God and the sooner in life you learn that then the less trouble and pain you will have to go through. Trust me, you are going to learn that lesson one way or the other. The choice is yours.

It has long been clean up time in the body of Christ. The time to get things together has been in front of us for a very long time. More and more we hear and see things that are daily reminders of our need for God. We cannot afford to take a chance and wait for later that may not exist. Every time I think of those five virgins who missed getting in it bothers me. It does not bother me that God did not let them in. It bothers me that they did not take it seriously enough to show up prepared. It is easy to wonder if they did not know the need of urgency but that is my point. Nobody told the others and yet they just knew. Nobody needs to tell us every time that we need to move with urgency when it comes to God. We should already know that and be taking this walk seriously enough to do that everyday. So there are a few questions to think about this week. What is going on in your life right now that should already be fixed? What is still going on only because you will not take it to God? What is lingering as we speak and what else is breaking down as a result of your delay? Every bad thing in your life is not always the enemy. Sometimes, it is you. The final question is what are you going to do to begin the process of letting God repair things in your life?

May the Lord continue to bless and keep you in His grace,
Bishop Carlos J. Lennon