IN YOUR BOOK WERE ALL WRITTEN: THE DAYS THAT WERE APPOINTED FOR ME – PART 1
Sakkie Parsons
Someone wrote to ask me the following question:
Is it true that God already decided how long we will live, in which case we cannot change how long we will live?
Then my answer according to how I understand the Word is as follows:
There is truth in the way the question was asked, but there is also a great untruth in the way the question was put.
Let me explain:
Most certainly, when our Lord created me, He already knew the amount of years He would give me on this earth and in this body, to do the works that He had planned for me. But He created me in His image, and because I was created in His image, like Him, I have a will of my own and our Lord respects that free will. In other words, our Lord in all His wisdom, which I can’t begin to understand, allows me to live my journey in this world according to my will.
I'm going to use an old example of mine to explain what I mean:
Our Lord wants the people of the entire world to be saved, therefore He sent His Son as perfect sacrifice.
The Word states the following:
JHN 3:16 “For God so [greatly] loved and dearly prized the world, that He [even] gave His [One and] only begotten Son, so that whoever believes and trusts in Him [as Savior] shall not perish, but have eternal life.”
JHN 3:17 “For God did not send the Son into the world to judge and condemn the world [that is, to initiate the final judgment of the world], but that the world might be saved through Him.”
Then, while Jesus is on his way to Calvary to bring exactly that great perfect sacrifice to "humanity," He himself states in His knowledge that not all of "humanity" but, on the contrary, a very small part of "humanity " will make use of that perfect divine sacrifice:
MAT 7:13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad and easy to travel is the path that leads the way to destruction and eternal loss, and there are many who enter through it.”
MAT 7:14 “But small is the gate and narrow and difficult to travel is the path that leads the way to [everlasting] life, and there are few who find it.”
Let’s go back to the question at hand:
Most certainly our Lord has set a precise date for my entry into this world and certainly our Lord has set a date for me to leave this body, even up to the exact second. But can I, by my using my own will to live and to do what I want, as I want, change that planned date?
As far as this is concerned, as I understand the Word, it works as follows:
Our Lord has determined the end date, but by my way of life, I change that date to date (x).
Of course, our Lord knew when He created me that by living out my free will, His date will change and of course, He knows up to the second what the new date is.
Whether I shorten that date, for example by smoking and dying earlier of lung cancer or other related diseases; whether I am shortening my life through drugs or any other type of bad lifestyle; whether I commit suicide; or someone else murders me (in God’s permissible will when I am His child) just to name a few examples – where Satan abuses man to shorten God's blueprint for our lives, our Lord has given us a start and end date and a blueprint in his heart when he created us and he also knew where we or someone else would shorten the date.
In other words; Man, through the will with which God created him when He created man in His image, can use that will to change his own and even another person's date, according to what our Lord laid out for that person.
Here I would just mention that the enemy is subordinate to our Lord's permissible will over me as His child.
For example I read the following in the word of our Lord's blueprint for my life:
PSM 139:15 “My frame was not hidden from You,
When I was being formed in secret,
And intricately and skillfully formed [as if embroidered with many colors] in the depths of the earth.”
PSM 139:16 “Your eyes have seen my unformed substance;
And in Your book were all written
The days that were appointed for me,
When as yet there was not one of them [even taking shape].”
PSM 139:17 “How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God!
How vast is the sum of them!”
We certainly cannot argue that:
"I can live as I want, as our Lord has already decided how long I will live”
One thing you can be assured of is that if you believe that this reasoning is true and you live by this, you will completely miss the date that God had planned for you in His heart.
Let me share something that happened during my school days: We had a teacher with the surname, Breytenbach:
One day in a physiology class, this was in “standard six” that time, but as we know it today, grade eight. Mr. Breytenbach told us how bad smoking is for you. Of course, he knew that many of us were smokers at that time, me included.
One of the guys, let's call him Willie, raised his hand.
When Mr. Breytenbach asked him what he wanted to say, Willie said, "Sir, my grandfather smoked Magaliesberg Tobacco and he lived to the age of 85."
I just want to mention that at that time, Magaliesberg Tobacco was the strongest tobacco you could find.
Then Mr. Breytenbach answered him:
"Willie, just imagine how old your grandfather would have been if he did not smoke Magaliesberg."
We, who accepted Jesus Christ as our Savior and Redeemer are on our way to Heaven – but that does not mean that we will just live a care free life because we are on our way to heaven and just so by the by we also go to church every now and then.
As I understand our Lord's purpose for a child of God here on earth, it is certainly not what our Lord wrote to us in His blueprint for us. Right now, I have to gather treasures in Heaven for myself, where moth and rust cannot destroy it.
We will discuss this more in depth in the following thoughts from the Word in this short series of 3.
For now, I conclude with a description of the Word of the kind of life and religion that can never be found in your and my life simply because it will never be part of our Lord's plan for our lives. A life and religion, which is celebrated right now in these days in which we live:
2TIM 3:2-4
2 “For people will be lovers of self [narcissistic, self-focused] , lovers of money [impelled by greed] , boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy and profane,”
3 “[and they will be] unloving [devoid of natural human affection, calloused and inhumane], irreconcilable, malicious gossips, devoid of self-control [intemperate, immoral] , brutal, haters of good,”
4 “traitors, reckless, conceited, lovers of [sensual] pleasure rather than lovers of God,”
Did you perhaps recognize something in what you just read about someone you know? Perhaps this someone is you?
Then listen to what my great hero Paul says, and I think this is still applicable today, for the greatest number of people who branded themselves with the Christianity label.
2TIM 3:5 “holding to a form of [outward] godliness (religion), although they have denied its power [for their conduct nullifies their claim of faith]. Avoid such people and keep far away from them.”
How I wish that the people that are religious-Christians, rather than Jesus-Christians, could read this, but especially the second, and even more so, the third part of this short series.
Kind Regards,
Sakkie