My best joke, that I ever told was when I was 13 years old. I was at Christian Youth In Action, which was a training camp for Child Evangelism Fellowship, an organization that shares the Gospel with children through 5 day clubs, fairs, camps, and open air. CEF had a major role in shaping me as did CYIA.
Let me set the scene. Each night of the training camp we would have a speaker who would share a message that was meant to train, inspire and equip us. Over the 5 years that I went to CYIA as a camper, I listened to many excellent messages and was trained to share the Gospel easily with others through a memorable mnemonic system. We used the letters of the word GOSPEL as our device to help us remember the important parts of the message and we would use a Bible verse to emphasize each point.
G- God the Creator loves you John 3:16 "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life."
O- Only Perfect Son 1 John 4:14 "And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world."
S- You and I have sinned. Romans 3:23 "For all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God."
P- Precious Blood Hebrews 9:22 "And almost all things are by the law purged with blood, and without shedding of blood is no remission."
E-Ever-Living Risen Savior 1 Corinthians 15:3-5 "For I delivered unto first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again according to the scriptures and that he was seen by Cephas, then of the twelve..."
L- Let Him In John 1:12 "...But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become sons of God, even to those who believe on His name.
We learned how to share the truths of the Gospel in this way. These truths have stuck with me throughout my life.
Now back to the one liner scenario: The speaker asked us all a question, it was a profound question that has been asked in various ways by other people. The question was: "If you knew that Jesus was coming back in 24 hours, what would you do with the time you had left?:
My thirteen year old response that I gave after raising my hand, (I think) was, "Skip School." I think that I got the biggest laugh response out of the camp that I have had after a joke, which I really enjoyed at the time.
The last couple of months, I have been pondering the question again, What would I do if I knew that Jesus was coming back today?
The fact is that I don't know when Jesus is coming back, but I want to be living in a way that honors our Heavenly Father and Jesus when He returns, and I want my life to be pleasing to Him as I live in submission to Him. That kind of life is the most difficult easy life imaginable. It is easy because God empowers us to live for Him when we accept His light burden, and o so difficult, because, actually letting Him lead is very contrary to how I often want to live.
For those of you who got to the end of this. Thank you for reading it. If any of you have any questions or comments related to this post, I would love to chat with you about them or comment back and forth.
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