Are You Dead or Alive?

         We live in a time when we hear the phrase, "the walking dead."  Society in this age refers this phrase to a person who has died, and then rises from the grave to walk around, still as a dead body and difficult to get back in the grave.  Our common term is that the person is a "zombie."  We may even refer to a sleepless period in our life that causes us to walk around like a zombie.  There is another group of people, however,  that is referred to in the Scriptures.  John 5:24-25 says, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.   Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God: and they that hear shall live." 
       A person who is a non believer, or not born again, or not a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ, could be more appropriately labeled as a person who is a part of  "walking dead."  Since that individual is alive physically, but dead spiritually, they can be referred to a person who is part of the "walking dead."  I was a person who was a part of the walking dead for 34 years of my life.  One question now comes to me is "why didn't someone tell me about it sooner?"  I even dated a Christian young lady but she never mentioned anything about spiritual things.  She was alive and I was a part of the walking dead.  In the first 34 years of my life, I can't recall anyone mentioning spiritual matters in my life.  My fellow instructor in the Navy shared two verses of Scripture with me which challenged me deeply, but I still ended up that day as a part of the walking dead.  Now, perhaps someone did mention it and since I was in a lost state, it went over  my head and I never got the message.  In college, my roommate invited me to church in Louisville, Kentucky and that was about the extent of my religious encounters.  The change finally came in my life when John 5:24 became a part of my conversion from the walking dead to the spiritually alive.  John mentions that the person who hears the Word of Christ and believes on God the Father Who has sent Him, that person shall have life.  That, then was the beginning of my being made alive.  In the movies, it is hard to kill a zombie, and in real life, it is hard to convince a person to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation because they are not hearing what you are saying.  John presents the Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of God and reminds all readers of the importance of "believing" in the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation.  You can look at John 20:31 and notice the purpose of the Gospel when it says,  "But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name."  Praise God today for salvation.  May we all be about the business of sharing the gospel with those we meet in our daily life.