Just saying the words, "If the Lord wills," makes you uncomfortable, doesn't it?  "I have an appointment tomorrow. I'll be there, if the Lord wills." Well, I'm sorry, Jesus, I'm booked tomorrow from 8:00 in the morning until 5:30 that afternoon. If I have to die tomorrow it would be Tuesday before I fell over. I don't have time.

If the Lord wills I'll be there. Tomorrow isn't mine. Tuesday isn't mine, nor is Wednesday.  It's not yours either. What you have is this moment, right here, right now. Nothing else is promised. We want to live like those children who anticipate the parents coming back, and so we put off doing what we know we should do. We think we will get it done on another day.

A husband puts off responding to his wife's request to another day. A parent ignores a child for another day, always assuming there will be another opportunity, another moment. That's not always true is it? You know like I know the stories of a wife - she has begged her husband, who is over-committed at work, to come home. He is stressed out; he has little time for his wife, little time for his marriage, and little time for his children.

Then somewhere in a hotel room, in a city he can't remember the name of, this man comes to his senses. He goes home and starts making the changes his wife asked him to make years before, and it is too late. "I'm doing everything she asked me to do," he will tell me, "but it's too late."

Some of you have assumed you will get things right with God, that you will make a profession of faith, that you will accept the call of Jesus in your life, that you will do the things He has told you to do, and you will do them when you're ready — when you feel like it — some other day. "Seek the Lord while He may be found," Isaiah cries out to his people. "Seek the Lord while He may be found." There is a clear implication here that there will come a time, there will come a day when you will seek the Lord and you will not be able to find Him. It simply will be too late.

My Old Testament professor was Dr. Clyde Francisco. We loved Dr. Francisco, because he was always mad that God made him teach at a seminary. He was. He would tell you, "If it is ever up to me I would pastor a church because I love to preach." Now here was the code when you had for Dr. Francisco. If he had his glasses on that meant he would "lecture" and that was going to be on the exam. If he took his glasses off, he was preaching and that would not be on the exam. We took our best notes while he was preaching, because most of us had to preach the next Sunday. We would steal his sermons like crazy. They were preached all over the country.

You also found out real quickly in class that Dr. Francisco's favorite prophet was Jeremiah. When you took him for Old Testament you were taking Jeremiah and a few of his friends, but you ended up in Jeremiah. One Tuesday afternoon he was lecturing, telling us about Jeremiah and the challenges this prophet of God faced. He came to chapter 8, verse 20: The harvest is past. Summer's gone and still we are not saved.

Jeremiah is lamenting all of the markers the people had put on their calendars that were to be saved by this date, by that date. All of these dates had come and gone and still the people were not saved. The city would be overrun soon. The nation would be destroyed. Harvest is past. The summer is gone, and still you are not saved.

Then, to our utter amazement, Dr. Francisco put his glasses down on the lectern and he began to preach to those of us who were in that classroom. Every one of us in that classroom was an ordained minister. We were each going to do something in the church. We were going to do something in the denomination. That's where our lives were going. We had told everybody. We had made it public.