As I was praying for a man nearing the end, and finished, I looked around and saw the family there.  The hospice lady made a comment.  She was given the reason why there was such a strong push to get him out of the hospital and to get him home.  If he was going to go and be with the Lord, he wanted to leave with family and friends around.  And he’s got a lot of family and he’s got a lot of friends; amen?  And I looked around the room and I saw the little guys, the grandchildren, the children, the wives.  What a treasure!  And the hospice nurse said that, she said, “You would be surprised how many people we care for that don’t have one or two people, if that.”  We’re blessed, praise God!  I’d like to encourage you to deal with some of those piddling little problems that you have with family and friends, and the need that we have sometimes to be justified or to be right, the little complaints that we have about one another, and just be thankful that we have one another; amen?

“Are few saved?”  Well, it depends.  We’ve got to finish this race.  I would say the thing we want to work on most as we’re headed down the stretch here would be able to take a complete look into our hearts and ask God for greater humility.  Amen?  Just a willingness to lower our estimation of ourselves and things having to go exactly the way we want and if not then we’re out of sorts.  What a tragedy in this hour as the Lord’s preparing His church, for us to drive each other away instead of to come together.  The last six months, we’ve been dealing with numerous problems in marriages, in relationships.  Can I just encourage you with the fact that God loves that soul and died for them, praise God!  And He’s not willing that any would perish.  Why would you perish in war with someone who’s supposed to be one, bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh?  

God’s calling us together in this last hour to be His representatives, a church not only without spot or wrinkle but a church unified.  Amen?  Family.  The one thing, as my mother passed and many of you, of course, already experienced these types of things.  As I was just surveying, looking at some of the thoughts in my mind, I thought, “You know, another generation gone.”  What have these people left behind?  Dad passed a number of years ago; my mom just passed away.  Between the two of them, mom at 96 years old.  Grandma was 103.  She’ll have had accumulated and had to her total net worth about $8,000.  She did better than Uncle Ike; she finished in the black, praise God!  Uncle Ike owed the company store.  And it caused me to think about stuff.  What is it we’re acquiring and why?  Shouldn’t we really be laying up treasures in heaven?  Amen?  What vanity if our decision-making is for the temporal.  She finished rich!