One Life To Live

Have you ever felt like you were not living the way you were created to live, and if each year for the next 50 years looked like this one, you would look in the mirror, gray and wrinkled, and feel like you’ve completely wasted so much of your life? Yet it’s okay to take it easy because you’re young and you have forever to live a life of significance. Someone once said, “Who you are today is who you are becoming.” And should it be that you don’t have another 50 years to live but a mere 5 minutes, what are you doing today to make your life count? Jonathan Edwards, when he was a teenager, wrote, “Resolved, never to do anything, which I should be afraid to do, if it were the last hour of my life.” How often do you think about death? Let’s not think about that, let’s enjoy the moment.

“Resolved, to think much on all occasions of my own dying, and of the common circumstances which attend death.” – Jonathan Edwards

Life is not one party after another. Don’t hear what I’m not saying. I’m not saying live miserable and depressed. I’m not saying don’t go to parties. I’m not saying don’t enjoy what God has blessed you with. What I’m saying is that you should not have to be reminded day after day that people are perishing, and you should not have to be persuaded not to be apathetic about that. In all your business and activities and youth, don’t forget that life is about more than a preoccupation with clothes and sales and tans.

You could live a life of significance. That doesn’t mean being popular, or famous, or rich, or a CEO, or just like your favorite celebrity, or that your friendships will mimic the cast of your favorite TV show. You want your life to count? Your friendships will look nothing like the friendships from your TV show. No one will want to be like your friends. The world will not want to be just like you because you do things no one else wants to do. You serve when everyone else wants to be served. You give when everyone else wants to receive. You do the dishes when no one else wants to. You clean the apartment when no one else seems to. You serve the church with all your heart, and don’t complain about how imperfect it is. You love people not because they love you in return, but even when they don’t. You pray for people when they are unkind to you. You respect authority. You honor your parents. You bless your enemies. You are not cliquey or partial with your friendships, and you ask for forgiveness when you are. You don’t play around in sin, and you definitely don’t love it when you do. You find, as we all do, that your failings are many in all of this. You endeavor still to do these things, from assurance, not insecurity; and you don’t say “being a Christian is tough” or “ministry is hard” at the end of the day, but realize you are an unworthy servant and weep at your own sinful yet forgiven heart, and pray that it would be more inclined to serve sacrificially and impartially like your precious Lord deserves. You realize any good wrought in you is all grace. Your life will not make it as the next TV show with the cast whose lives everyone wants to emulate. You do these things even if for the next 50 years not a single person recognizes you for them, because you really do believe that the Lord sees and that the Lord is pleased, and you don’t aim to please man but God. You sing “Oh to grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be” at church and live each day like you actually mean it. You want to love your neighbor as yourself, and so when you see that your neighbor is suffering or has a lack of resources or oh so much more significantly, has eyes that do not see and ears that do not hear, you don’t ignore your neighbor or wait for your neighbor to ask for your affection and time, all with the statement “God wants me to enjoy my life.” …You are afraid to wrongly interpret and apply Scripture.

Look back on your life so far. What do you have of eternal significance to show? On that judgment day you will be stripped of all your excuses. I don’t want you to stand there and wish you could do it all over again. I don’t want to stand there and wish I could do it all over again.  You may be a full-time employee, you may be a full-time student, you may be a full-time mom, you may be a combination of those, your life may be full of events and activities. You could still do everything above. I intentionally did not include anything about missions when I say to you, make your life count. Though not to suggest that you should not be involved in missions. John Piper once said, there are those who go, those who send, and those who are disobedient. I didn’t include missions in here to demonstrate that you could live a life that is not wasted even if you’re living in a place like LA amidst all the noise and distractions and triviality. Everything all around you may seem to suggest that it is normal to live an apathetic, lukewarm life. There’s nothing normal about it. Don’t look around you to see what’s normal. Look to the Word of God. Look to what God has commanded of you and that is what’s normal. Turn off the TV, pass up on one of the events or parties, close the door, open your Bible, dwell in it, seek the Lord. You will see that it is not normal to live an apathetic life. And on that judgment day, you will not regret the time you spent praying to the Lord, seeking to know Him, studying His Word. You will not regret giving, serving, loving, yielding everything for the cause of Christ.

Do you really want to be used by the Lord? Know this, the world needs the Word of God. I want the Lord to use me too, but I realized something. I’m not making myself useful. I know so little of the Word of God and I don’t pursue holiness with the vigor that I should. I spend too much time watching TV. I realized this when I was having a conversation and knew that if I had spent more time studying the Bible, I would be more useful in that moment. The hours I’ve wasted. Let’s encourage each other in the Lord daily. I know I need it. O how I need to exhort my own soul in these very things as I’m writing at this moment. Are you equipped in the Word of God? Are you holy? Are you yielded? Flee from your idols. Mortify your sin. Seek the Lord. He will help you and preserve you and encourage your heart with the Gospel when you fail. Who hasn’t failed? Keep going in the strength that He provides after you fail. And know that your life will be infinitely better than what you see on the TV shows. You will enjoy a life that is truly life; and more precious to your heart, dear Christian, than anything else, you will honor King Jesus.

~ by nve on July 6, 2009.