Those What-if Moments

So , what if  you  are one whom has  received  some common grace  from God...   grace that is common to all people...  a respite from the  hot day  by a cooling shower,or perhaps  you've driven over the rise to see the most amazing view  of  God's handiwork,  and  you  actually felt blessed to be there at that moment in time to enjoy such majesty.  Maybe  you've been disappointed  to lose a loved one in a horrible  auto crash or disease,  and felt  where is God now...    loss comes to everyone..  but what about that  wonderful  memory you have when you were  miraculously  saved  from what could have been a horrific  accident..  when you just almost pulled on to the interstate    in front of a  car  driving full speed..  but  when you had looked back they had been  in your blind spot...  I know that has happened to me, more than once...  and I praise God  I didn't kill myself and  others.  I know  that,  for me I am praying,  for a dear family member to come to accept  Christ.  I think she blames God for taking her father  with leukemia when she was a girl..  and her husband  with   Lymes Syndrome  a few years ago..  That is a lot to  have endured...   God/Jesus is the light of the world, the giver of life..   death came into the world through sin...  Both of these men were good men...  I don't know if they were believers,  but  that  wouldn't have mattered. Death is not a respecter of persons, except for  Christians who will be caught up in the air  at the day of the Lord...  which could be   tomorrow  or  in one year of  20. No one knows the day or hour  but  that day is nearer than we think.  Death comes to all.. I do not want it to come to my dear family member  unless she has  given her heart and  mind to Christ and then will  inherit    eternity in heaven  where  we  will be together   beyond time..  
What about you, reader? I know  you can look back over your life and see where God's good grace  fell upon you...  and  you  had a "what, if" moment.

 ...If indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.

 1 Peter 2:3

"If." Then this is not a matter to be taken for granted concerning every one of the human race. "If"--then there is a possibility and a probability that some may not have tasted that the Lord is gracious. "If"--then this is not a general but a special mercy; and it is necessary to ask whether we know the grace of God by inward experience. There is no spiritual favor that may not be a matter for heart-searching.

But while this should be a matter of earnest and prayerful inquiry, no one ought to be content while there is any such thing as an "if" about his having tasted that the Lord is good. A jealous and holy distrust of self may give rise to the question even in the believer's heart, but the continuance of such a doubt would be an evil indeed. We must not rest without a desperate struggle to clasp the Savior in the arms of faith and say, "I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that Day what has been entrusted to me."1

Do not rest, believer, until you have a full assurance of your interest in Jesus. Let nothing satisfy you until, by the infallible witness of the Holy Spirit bearing witness with your spirit, you are identified as a child of God. Do not trifle with this. Do not be satisfied with "perhaps" or "if" or "maybe." Build on eternal truths; really build upon them. Let your anchor be cast into that which is within the veil, and see to it that your soul is linked to the anchor by a cable that will not break. Get beyond these dreary "ifs"; stay no longer in the wilderness of doubts and fears; cross the Jordan of distrust, and enter the promised land of peace, where the land ceases not to flow with milk and honey.

1) 2 Timothy 1:12

A devotional by Alistiar Begg