What if

1 Thessalonians 2:13

Have you ever played the game “What if”?  I bet you have, I have often and it can be a very dangerous place to go in you mind.  The game goes something like this; What if I had been born to someone else, what if I had been bigger, or smaller, smarter, or had gone to a better University, what if I had married ________ and if you played the game you know who goes into the blank.  The “what if” game happens most often and is played when life is not going well, we are discouraged, and we are looking for someone to blame. The game is played out in the mind, and most of the time it is never shared with anyone. 

But this morning, will you play the game once more with me, and this is the question: “What-if” you and I accepted the word of God, the Bible, for what it really is, “The word of God”?   What-if we obeyed its teaching?  How would your life and those around you be changed? 

To play the game correctly we must begin with ourselves, what-if you believed that you were forgiven and the debt that stood against us with its legal demands had been canceled, as stated in Colossians 2:13-15.  What-if you believed 1 Peter 2:9, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”  If you and I believed that, then our actions would be very different, because if we believed 1 Peter 2:9, we would have this attitude, bring it on world; World do you have any understanding of whose I am, do you understand that the Creator has chosen me, I am His, and so give it your best shot, because I’m dead to your darkness, I now live in His marvelous light.

What-if you believed 2 Peter 1:3-4, “His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has promises, so that through them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world because of sins desire.”  How would our lives be changed if we believed that we were at this moment partakers of His divine nature, and no longer had sins control over us.

What-if you believed Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ.  It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.  And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”  If you and I believed that we would charge hell with a water pistol, if the Spirit of God so led us to do so. 

What-if we did what these Thessalonian believers did in verse 13, “And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers.”  We would be a light in this present darkness, as they were to the lost world that encompasses them.

Some day, and no one knows that day but God the Father, we will stand in His presence and we will no longer play games in our minds, but we will understand totally the value God placed on us.  We will full understand the love the Father has for us, and for a moment we may ever understand “What-if”.  Yes for a fleeting moment, never to be recalled, you and I may understand the “What-if” of our unbelief.

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice