Good Morning Lord!


And do this, understanding the present time. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.

Romans 13:11-12

If you are under forty you would consider me to be an old man. I am sixty-three years old but I still remember being young enough to be sitting in church listening to a sermon and not understanding most of what was said. I enjoyed the music and it was nice to be with my parents and brother, but the sermon mostly went right over my head.

The same thing was true when I would hear the news or look at a newspaper. There were things being talked about that literally meant nothing to me as a little boy!

In Romans 13 Paul encourages us to “understand the present time.” How do you do that?

In order to understand anything you must have a frame of reference and body of experience that enables you to identify and define whatever it is you are seeking to understand. If you want to understand another language you must have a vocabulary of individual words that you know before you can understand the meaning of a sentence using a number of those words together.

If you want to understand the present time you must have an understanding of previous times. As a follower of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, living in you, is your frame of reference. Also the Word of God is the “body of experience” that enables you to understand this present time.

As I write these words and look out of my window I can see the darkness of night, but I know that the night is almost over because the clock says it is 5:00 AM. Soon the sky will begin to lighten and the Sun will show itself on the horizon in the East.

If you understand the present time you know; “The night is nearly over; the day is almost here.” Therefore we must put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light.

Good morning Lord!