Opinion: Your happiest hour on Earth should be your last

Happy hour is a marketing term for a time when a venue (such as a restaurant, bar, bowling alley, stadium, state fair or county fair) offers discounts on alcoholic drinks. Free appetizers and discounted menu items are often served during happy hour. Employees start talking about happy hour after lunch and can't wait to visit their favorite venue to meet up with friends.

The food is usually good, the fellowship relaxing, and oftentimes participants have too much to drink. The evening becomes a stress-relieving blockbuster. Sometimes people even end up with acquaintances at places where they should have never agreed to in the first place.

Happy hour provides a place, a time and the audience for people to camouflage their underlying issues. People are in fact happy during that hour or two. Reality, however, eventually shows up and spoils everything. After happy hour, the problems are still present, the bills are still due, and the marriage is still on the rocks. With all that this world is facing these days, I'm not sure if there is a marketed venue where anybody can physically attend to be happy and safe. Restaurants are pickup only, permanently, or partially closed for dinning. People don't feel safe sitting together at their favorite bar anymore. Precautions must be practiced on everything to the point of paranoia. When you pick up your silverware to eat, proper washing and sterilization of each piece is running through your mind. Who would have thought life would be like this during our lifetime? What can we do to find happiness?

A great start on the journey to finding happiness is to truly love the people who love you. I know we should love everybody because it is the right thing to do. Oftentimes, however, we love everybody except the people who love us, our immediate family. When we love these people genuinely, each hour with them is saturated with happiness. You should be anxious to spend quality hours with your spouse, children and grandchildren. Hanging out with your pet even becomes precious.

The ultimate feeling of happiness is to be confident of where you're going to spend eternity. People preplan their funeral with their family and the funeral director. They make sure the life insurance policy is paid, the grave plot has been selected, clothes have been chosen and the obituary is 90% completed. The will is written and changed over and over again right up to death. Why go through all of that trouble and leave the fate of your soul in limbo?

The happiest hour in this life should be the last one we live on this Earth, simply because we know that we are finally going home. A well-known mortician once said, "It's alright to go home when your work down here is done." You prepare for this final hour just like you prepare for your funeral that you will not be in attendance of. You start by reading John 3:16, "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." So how do you believe in him whom you have not seen? Keep reading.

Romans 10:13-15. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher?

A God fearing preacher is always available to walk you through the plan of salvation. In fact, let's do it right now.

It is as simple as repeating these words after me. Lord Jesus, I'm a sinner with a soul that needs to be converted. Come into my life. I give you permission to be my Lord and Savior. Save me right now. I want my name written in the Lamb's book of life. I want to spend eternity with you. Teach me your ways and fill me with the Holy Ghost so that I can teach transgressors your way. Please put people in my life that will assist me in my spiritual growth. Thank you for saving me. AMEN!

If you prayed this prayer, you are saved and your sins are forgiven!

Find a ministry that you can associate with to become all that the Lord has planned for your life.

In God We Trust!

Sam Livingston is pastor of Antioch Missionary Baptist Church in Manning.