My wife, Jennifer, and I have traveled the world together, and as an entrepreneur I have experienced a full life with both rewarding successes and challenging losses. As the cliché goes, it’s lonely at the top, but I’ve always taken solace in the words of our 26th President, Teddy Roosevelt, who wrote a speech entitled, The Man in the Arena:
It’s not the critic who counts.
No, not the one who points out how the big man stumbled or how the doer of deeds could have done them better.
No, the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena. Whose face is marred with dust and blood and sweat.
Who strives valiantly in a worthy cause.
And spins himself, who errs.
Who comes short again and again.
Who, if he wins, knows the triumph of high achievement.
And if he loses, at least loses while daring greatly.
So that his place will never be among those cold and timid souls.
Who knew neither victory nor defeat.
My appreciation of poetry began when I met a vivacious English professor in my sophomore year of college, and I can still remember from her class a moving passage from Shakespeare’s Julius Ceaser in which the poet writes:
There is a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.
All the voyages of their lives end in shallows and in miseries.
And on such a full sea, we are now afloat.
And we must take the current when it serves.
Or lose our ventures.
Both of these poetic excerpts form a prelude to my life as it is now. Diagnosed with a massive brain tumor and given somewhere around a year to get my affairs in order, I am so grateful that despite having this ticking time bomb in my head, I have been given time through surgery and the prayers of my friends and family to sort out the future for my family and to share my message with those around me.
I believe in God and the salvation afforded to us through his son, Jesus. This central belief has sustained me no matter what I’ve experienced and forms the core of the message that I wish to share. To me, there are two principles in the Bible that I feel need to be emphasized. First, that the promise of God is sufficient for our salvation. And secondly, that as long as you have breath in you, it’s never too late to heed the call of God and put your hand to his work.
In Luke chapter 21, Jesus uses a parable to illustrate the call of God to do his will in our lives. It’s a parable much like the one of the prodigal son, but in this parable, a father goes to his two sons and asks them to work in the vineyard. One son agrees but doesn’t follow through. The other son refuses but later changes his mind and does what his father asked. Jesus asks which son did the will of his father, and the answer is that the son who refused but later fulfilled his father’s request is the son who indeed did the will of his father.
Life is like that for many of us. Maybe, the Lord opened your eyes and heart to the pure and simple truth of the gospel, and you said, Yes Lord, I believe.
When Jesus showed up at the grave of his friend Lazarus, the two sisters of the deceased were there, and one of them, Martha, lamented that if only Jesus had been there earlier, he could have healed her brother and saved him from dying.
Jesus answers her by saying that Lazarus will rise again, and she agrees that he will stand up on the day of the resurrection of the dead to be judged. Jesus adds that he who believes in him will never die, and he asks Martha if she believes this.
Martha says, “Yes Lord, I believe.”
When I reflect on this passage, I like to substitute Martha’s name with my own. I ask myself if I believe, and I have to say, “Yes Lord, I believe.”
Jesus offers us the gift of eternal life if we’ll only believe in him – believe in the person and believe in the promise. My only obligation is to stand on the promise that if you believe in Jesus, you have eternal life.
I ask you now, do you believe?
Ephesians 2:8-9 encapsulates Martin Luther’s five sola statements: sola gratia, sola fide, solus Christus, sola scriptura and soli Deo gloria. Translated, they read, only by grace, only through faith, only in Christ, only from scripture, and only for the glory of God.
We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, from the scriptures alone, for the glory of God alone.
A friend of mine once said that I talk a great deal about heaven and asked me how I could be so sure that heaven is my destiny. My response was that I simply believe the promise that God made.
And although the message of salvation is an important one, there’s more to heaven than just getting there; there are rewards for those who serve God now, today. And the closer we are to Christ in this life, the closer we’ll be to him in the kingdom of God throughout eternity.
If you want to be an ambassador for the coming King, you can choose to fulfill that duty today. In Revelation 3:20 we see Jesus’ message to the church in Laodicea in which he expresses that the believers were neither hot nor cold, but instead they are merely lukewarm. If you have been lukewarm in your faith, it’s not too late to become enthusiastic, just as it was not too late for the brother who refused his father and later changed his mind and fulfilled his father’s request.
It’s not too late for any of us. It’s not too late for me with as little time as I have left, and it’s not too late for you, either.
Over the whole world hovers a cloud of sin and death ever since the fall of Adam and Eve. Piercing through this dark cloud is the Son of God who left his throne to come to us in the form of the most unique man who ever lived, a God-Man who died on the cross so that we may believe in him and receive the gift of eternal life.
I hope that these verses are as encouraging to you as they are to me. I encourage everyone to memorize scripture, especially the Psalms. I have always taken great comfort from meditating on the Psalms, especially Psalm 121:
I lift up my eyes to the mountains—where does my help come from?
My help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot slip—he who watches over you will not slumber;
Indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.
The LORD watches over you—the LORD is your shade at your right hand;
The sun will not harm you by day, nor the moon by night.
The LORD will keep you from all harm—he will watch over your life;
The LORD will watch over your coming and going both now and forevermore.