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Lou Coleman
By Lou Coleman
If you live this life of yours like you are going to live this life forever… then you are playing the fool! If you are duped into thinking that there must be another way to Heaven (even amidst the knowledge of Jesus’ words that He is the “Only Way”)… then you are playing the fool! If you come and go service after service, time after time, all the while God extends His saving grace unto you, and you keep resisting His offer of salvation… then you are playing the fool! If you are deceived into thinking you have all of your life to get right with the Lord… then you are playing the fool! And if you think you can have all the pleasure now and think about eternity later… then you are playing the fool!
Listen, life is filled with choices each and every day. Choices produce consequences, and actions produce reactions. Saul life stands as a warning to us that we cannot rebel against God and get away with it. Your choices and actions will catch up with you—maybe not today, maybe not even tomorrow. But sooner or later, the Bible says, “Your sin will find you out unless you repent.”
I don’t think any of us can comprehend the great conflict right now that exists in the Spirit realm. Nor do we realize how determined Satan is to destroy us. In Ephesians 5:15 Paul tells us, to walk circumspectly. “See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise.” He warns the Church to wake up from their dead state. The goal of Proverbs is to impart wisdom…To know wisdom and instruction (Proverbs 1:1-3.) One way to learn about something is to consider its opposite… Want to understand what is wisdom? Then know what folly is! Want to be wise? Then don’t be a fool!
Peter warned, “Be sober, be watchful: your adversary the Devil as a roaring lion, walks about, seeking whom he may devour” (1 Pet. 5:8). BEWARE! The devil is out to steal your soul, and he will use any deceit in his arsenal. (2 Cor 2:11) So be warned and be on guard every single day, and if you should fall for one of his devices, repent and turn back to the Lord. Remember the greatest sin is not falling for the devices of the Devil, but the reluctance to turn from it and back to God.
If you’re tired of living your life being hoodwinked, bamboozled, ran amuck, led astray, tricked and trapped, and/or tied of people leading you down a wrong path, do like Paul did and take the scales off your eyes so you can see! Once you start seeing you become a better person than you were before. Things that you use to say, you don’t say anymore. Things you used to think about, you don’t think about anymore. Things that tripped you up, you walk around them, you step over them, and you go under them now. I hear Jesus saying, “The thief comes to steal, kill and destroy: I come that they may have life and have it more abundantly.”
Look, it is a fact that we are all going to slip up in life. We are all going to make mistakes. We are all going to sin. But you don’t want to look back on your life one day and think I threw my life away by the stupid choices I made. The question is, can you learn from your mistakes? Can you say, “That was such a bitter experience, such a hard pill to swallow, I pray that I will never do that again?” If so, you have learned something. Something good will have come out of something bad. But if you go back and do the same thing again and again, then you are falling backward, and ultimately, you are going to play the fool again. Don’t do it! You can’t trifle with God.
Jesus asked this question in Mark 8:36, 37: “What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” It is an awful thing to fall into the hands of a sovereign and angry God, who shall consign men to Hell. The rich man woke up, but it was too late. Lots of people are awakened out of their lethargy, but it is too late. He awoke, but it was too late. He came face to face with the inevitable fact that God was taking charge now. “Thou Fool, this night I am going to require thy soul . . .”
Suppose God should say to you, “You have played the fool, and today thy soul shall be required of thee.” What would you do? Where would you spend Eternity? That is the question: Who are you today? Are you a Fool or are you Wise?
