The Right Now

Happy Sunday, and happy New Year! I truly appreciate you watching, and I look forward to where God leads us in 2022. I told my board of directors that I'm contemplating a study on the Book of Revelation this year. If you're interested in that, send me a message, or if you would like a specific topic covered, let me know. You can contact me on my website.

If someone asked you, "What was the greatest moment of your life?" what would you tell them? You may say the day of your salvation, your wedding day, the birth of a child, or for some of us, a grandchild. Maybe it was a day of graduation or your retirement, a new job, something. I want to offer another candidate for the list. I believe the greatest moment of your life and of my life is right now.

Let me explain. Right now is all we have. Every past moment is gone, forever gone. The past will never return. The future is out there somewhere; it's not here.

We can spend eternity waiting for tomorrow, and if we do that, we miss the right now. All we have is the tick of the clock now and the beat of the heart now. I pray that in 2022 we will live in the moment, the right now. This very moment is God's irreplaceable gift to you.

If you're going to connect with God, the past is gone, the future is not yet; what you and I have is the right now. If the right now is the greatest moment, I want to warn you what might be the most dangerous moment: tomorrow. I want to look at an Old Testament story about that. It's found in Exodus chapter eight.

A little background here: the children of Israel are slaves in Egypt, and God is using Moses to lead them back home to the Promised Land. Pharaoh does not want to let them go, so God sends plagues on Egypt to persuade Pharaoh to let His people go. The first plague was the water turning to blood, and today we will talk about the second plague: frogs.

We're told when that plague came, the Nile River was filled with frogs. The frogs overflowed and came out of the river, and they invaded, and they were everywhere. Scripture says they were in the palace, and they were in the king's bed, and they were in the kitchen, and they were in the bread bowl. All over Egypt, you name it, it had frogs. So Pharaoh called Moses and begged him to remove the frogs.

I want to read verses 8, 9, and 10 from Exodus 8. We're told Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and begged, "Pleads plead with the Lord to take the frogs away from me and my people. I will let your people go so they can offer sacrifices to the Lord." Moses responded, "You set the time. Tell me when you want me to pray for you and your officials and your people. Then you and your houses will be rid of the frogs, and they will then remain only in the Nile River."

You're not going to believe Pharaoh's answer. Moses has just offered him, "Okay, I'll get rid of the frogs. You said you'll let the people go. We'll make a deal. When do you want them gone?" Pharaoh's answer, in Exodus 8:10: "Do it tomorrow," Pharaoh said.

Now, I must admit I've done my share of procrastinating, but this is ridiculous. Frogs are everywhere, and Pharaoh has a chance to make them go away, and instead of the right now, he chooses tomorrow. I think had Pharaoh's wife been with him, he would not have delayed. I have a picture in my mind a Pharaoh's wife standing in a chair, yelling at her husband to do something about these frogs. Maybe she was out of town; who knows?

Scholars guess that Pharaoh said tomorrow because he was hoping that the frogs would go away on their own, maybe that night, or his magicians could do something to reverse the plague. He was hoping that the God of Moses was not so powerful. It took eight more plagues to convince the stubborn man.

We've all done it: put off till tomorrow what we should have done in the right now. We'll exercise beginning tomorrow, or write that book tomorrow, or get finances in order tomorrow, or make that call tomorrow, or stop that bad habit tomorrow, or forgive that person tomorrow. What really matters is this: God is present in this instant, and God is ready right now.

It is so important that we learn to live in the moment. Maybe we should put our phones down, see what we are missing. Have you ever been in a room full of people, and all of them were on the phone surfing? I've been guilty of that, and I don't want to live that way any longer.

This past year we did a study on the fruit of the Spirit. If you missed it, you can go to my website, davidshivers.com, and see that study. God taught me to always seek to walk in the Spirit. We're to do that at all times, in all moments, right now. See Galatians 5:16. If we are walking in the present, it is present tense; if we are walking in the Spirit, it is present tense. It is only in the right now.

Happy New Year! I hope and pray that 2022 is a great year for you and your family. It's hard to believe that it's 2022. I remember in high school reading the George Orwell book 1984, and that seemed so far in the future. Remember the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey? That really was far off and futuristic.

Just the day before yesterday, it seems, people were talking about Y2K and the year 2000, and now it's 2022. Time flies. Do not miss what God has for you. Take advantage of the right now. Celebrate the present, or you could spend another night with the frogs if you choose.

Happy New Year. Let's pray. Lord, help us to be so connected to You that we take advantage every moment of the right now of our relationship. Motivate us in the right now to do those things we've been putting off, the things we've been meaning to do, and let this be a productive year when all of us make a difference for the kingdom of God. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. God bless.