It seems like every where I turn God is stressing the importance of living life with urgency. I have been devouring books in the evenings and each of them has been resounding with the theme of viewing out lives as a vapor. In church we are talking about heaven...and the urgency to tell others about Christ's gift of eternal life to those who would believe. Urgency is a reoccurring theme in my life right now.
But, it matters what you urgent about in life. Most of us live a life of urgency...but it's urgent about things that don't last. We urgently seek promotions at work for more money we can't do a thing with when we die. We urgently seek power and respect in positions that won't last longer than the people who fill them. We urgently seek love from humans who can't ever truly love us the way we were created to be loved. We urgently seek approval from flawed humans just as messed up as we are. We urgently give our children things that won't last. We are urgent, all right, but many times about things that just won't be around when we take our final breath.
I am dying...so are you. Each moment we are not becoming younger and more alive...each moment our bodies are wasting away. You are dying...it's a fact. Whether you have a minute, dying from a sudden heart attack...or several more decades, you are still going to die. Where will you go...what will happen when you take that last breath? Do you know?
I do! I will be in a place with God that lasts forever! It's called heaven...and it's real. Because I have become a slave to Jesus Christ in this life, I want to be urgent about what is eternal. That will be around after I am long gone from this earth. Devoting our lives to Jesus and accepting His gift of life eternal is what will last. We are investing in something eternal with our lives...it's either eternal with God or eternal in hell.
God has convicted me that though I am a Christian and my eternal dwelling is secured...I am not living devoted and enslaved to things that will last. It is a challenge because our world and the lies of Satan tell us that we have to live it up in this life and get all we can before we die. But why? If you can't take it with you...if it doesn't last...why in the WORLD would we chase after it with the few years we have here? I want to spend my entire life on this earth chasing after the prize! The real deal...the Word of God and the souls of men.
James, in the Bible, tells us this:
Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that." As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil. Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins.
I am praying for a life of urgency...one that is desperate to know God to the fullest, be conformed to Christ daily, be bound as a slave to the Spirit's leading, to immerse myself in His Word, and overflow from those things onto the people around me so that they may see the joy of loving Christ in my life. They would see what is of value in this life...Christ!
Today I pray that you will join me in the journey of faith. That we will live every moment asking God to redeem our time, our relationships, our conversations, our free time, our thoughts, our love, our families, our being. I want to be a slave...with no identity of my own...but only glory to my master. Only then we any of us really understand true freedom that lasts!
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