Witness in the Word · Module 2 — How It Happens Without You Noticing
Class 6 – There Is Time
Source: At Some Point Things Changed, Chapter Two
The Most Dangerous Word May Be Later
There are some things we want to become old enough to do simply because we have been warned not to do them. Youth has a way of believing that experience is necessary before wisdom can be trusted, and sometimes we become determined to discover for ourselves whether the warnings we have heard are really true.
I know something about that because I was not a young man who had never been warned. I had known the voice of God from an early age. I knew He was dealing with me, and I knew there were things He wanted from my life. I did not tell Him that I would never follow Him. My answer was more subtle than that and, looking backward, perhaps more dangerous because it sounded reasonable to me at the time.
I believed there was time.
I wanted to live a little first. I wanted to drink a little, carouse a little, see some of what the world had to offer, and then I intended to become serious about God. In my own mind I was not rejecting Him. I believed I was simply postponing the decision until some later time when I had experienced enough of life to turn my attention toward Him.
The Deception of Later
That word later can deceive us because it does not sound like no. We can know that God is dealing with us and still convince ourselves that postponing our response is somehow different from refusing Him. We intend to obey eventually. We intend to make things right eventually. We intend to become serious eventually. Because the intention remains somewhere in our minds, we can continue telling ourselves that everything is all right.
The problem with my reasoning was not simply the things I wanted to experience. The greater problem was the assumption hidden underneath them. I believed tomorrow belonged to me. I assumed I possessed enough future days to decide when I would respond to God, when I would change direction, and when I would become the man I already knew He was calling me to be.
At that age, I did not think about it in those words. I was simply living as though there would always be enough time to straighten things out later. Eternity seemed distant, death seemed like something that belonged mostly to older people, and tomorrow appeared almost guaranteed. I was postponing the most important decision of my life while assuming the opportunity to make that decision would remain available whenever I was ready.
Mercy I Did Not Deserve
Looking backward, I can see where some of those choices could have taken me. I cannot credit wisdom for bringing me through those years because wisdom would have prevented many of those choices in the first place. The word that explains much more accurately why I am still here to write about them is mercy.
God showed me mercy when I had done nothing to deserve it. The direction I had chosen could have ended very differently, yet He gave me another opportunity. Because I intend to tell the truth in this book rather than present a cleaned-up version of my life, I also have to tell you that I later failed again. Once more I found myself in a place where the consequences could have been far different from what they were, and once more God showed me mercy.
That matters because I do not want anyone reading these pages to imagine that I traveled a straight road from childhood, made every proper decision, and now look backward wondering why everyone else could not have done the same. I am a man who heard God, told Him later, made choices I had already been warned about, and lived long enough to understand that His mercy toward me was much greater than anything I deserved.
Without that mercy, there might not be a book.
Mercy Is Not Permission
Mercy, however, should never be mistaken for permission. The fact that God was merciful to me does not mean my choices did not matter or that the warnings were unnecessary. God's mercy did not make my foolish decisions wise or remove every consequence that came from them. It meant that my foolishness did not have to become the final word concerning my life.
Perhaps that is one reason Solomon's words in Ecclesiastes speak so clearly to me now. He addresses the young person who believes there is plenty of life ahead, but he does not tell him that youth itself is wrong or that enjoying life is sinful. Instead, Solomon places responsibility beside enjoyment:
“Rejoice, O young man, in your youth, And let your heart cheer you in the days of your youth; Walk in the ways of your heart, And in the sight of your eyes; But know that for all these God will bring you into judgment.” — Ecclesiastes 11:9 (NKJV)
Solomon understood something about youth that should not be overlooked. He did not begin with condemnation. He began with rejoicing. Youth has energy, curiosity, expectation, strength, and an excitement about what lies ahead, and there is nothing wrong with those things. God did not create youth merely as a period to survive until a person becomes serious enough to be useful.
But Solomon places a truth beside that enjoyment that youth has difficulty holding onto: our choices have consequences, and ultimately we are accountable to God. The decisions made during our younger years do not necessarily remain there. They can travel with us into seasons we cannot yet imagine. A decision made at twenty may still be producing consequences at forty, fifty, or seventy. Some consequences are good and some are painful, but the young person rarely possesses enough experience to understand how far a single decision may reach.
That was the part I could not fully understand. I could understand the rejoicing. I could understand wanting to experience life and see what was available beyond the limits that had been placed around me. What I could not understand was how quickly the years would pass or how decisions made when tomorrow seemed unlimited could follow a man into years that once appeared impossibly far away.
Youth Needs Perspective
Solomon was not attempting to take youth away from the young man. He was trying to give him something youth does not naturally possess: perspective. He was telling him to enjoy the days God had given him without confusing the blessing of having time ahead with the assumption that some of that time was ours to waste.
There is an important difference between enjoying life and wasting it. God has given us things in this life to enjoy, people to love, work to accomplish, places to see, and memories to make. The problem begins when we use those good things as reasons to postpone Him, as though following God is something to be saved for a later season after we have finished living.
That was part of my mistake. I thought becoming serious about God meant giving up life rather than discovering the life He intended for me. I looked at some of the things I wanted to experience and believed I needed to have those first. God would still be there afterward, and He was, but I had no promise that I would be.
That is something I could not appreciate as a young man. I know it now not because someone finally found the right words to explain it to me, but because I have lived enough years to see how uncertain life can be. I have known people whose plans for tomorrow were interrupted by something they never expected today. I have seen circumstances change in a matter of minutes and lives take directions nobody anticipated.
Tomorrow Is Not Ours
This is not an argument for living afraid of tomorrow. God has not called us to spend every day frightened that something terrible may happen. It is an argument against treating tomorrow as though it were something we own. There is a difference between planning for the future and assuming the future belongs to us. We should make plans, prepare, work, save, build, and look forward to things ahead, but we should do all of it with the understanding that our lives remain in God's hands.
When we are young, later seems plentiful enough to support almost any delay. We can put off a conversation, postpone forgiveness, neglect a relationship, delay obedience, or tell God that we will deal seriously with Him after something else has been accomplished. The danger is not always that we intend to do wrong forever. Sometimes the danger is simply that we keep postponing what we already know is right.
I think about the young man I was and realize that God was not absent during those years. He was not somewhere far away waiting for me to finish whatever I thought I needed to experience before He became interested in my life. He was already there. He was dealing with me, calling me, correcting me, protecting me in ways I did not understand, and showing me mercy while I continued assuming there would always be enough time to become serious later.
Later Changes Its Reason
There is another side to this that becomes clearer with age. The word later does not disappear when youth ends. It simply changes what it attaches itself to. The young person may say he will become serious about God later because there are things he wants to experience first. The person in the middle years may say later because there are children to raise, bills to pay, a career to build, and responsibilities that seem impossible to set aside. An older person may still say later because there is something unresolved that he does not want to face.
The reason changes, but the word remains.
That is why the lesson is not merely for the young person I once was. It is for the man I am today, and perhaps it is for the person reading these words. If God is dealing with us about something now, we should be very careful about answering Him with a day He has never promised us.
Today Is Where Obedience Lives
We cannot go back and recover the years already spent. I cannot return to my youth and make different choices with the understanding I possess today. But God has not asked me to return to yesterday. He has given me today, and today is the only place where obedience can actually take place.
Perhaps that is the lesson I was too young to understand. The danger was never simply that time was passing; it was believing that time belonged to me.
For Reflection
Read: 2 Corinthians 6:2; James 4:14
1. The chapter calls "later" the most dangerous word. Where are you currently telling God "later" about something He has already made clear?
2. What did you believe you were owed — more time, more chances — that Scripture never actually promises?
3. "Today is where obedience lives." What is the one obedience being postponed until an assumed tomorrow?
This Week: Do the one thing you have been postponing "until later" — today, not this week.