Precious Time
In James 4 we are reminded of this great truth ... "Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: Whereas ye know not what [shall be] on the morrow. For what [is] your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. For that ye [ought] to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that." (James 4: 13-15).
Time is one thing, I think, we all take for granted. We waste so much of it. And once an hour, or a minute, or a second is gone, it is gone. It can never be regained. But all of us are only granted so much life. In Job, we are told "Seeing his days [are] determined, the number of his months [are] with thee, thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass" (Job 14:5). God has our days numbered. Before we are born the Lord knows the time of our dying. It is a conceit of the young that they live under the illusion of immortality. But how many people who ought to know better still live as though they will never die. They spend their lives fighting God because they think they will never face Him. Scripture also tells us that "It is appointed unto men to die once and after this the judgment." (Heb. 9:27). In the history of the human race, only two people have gone to heaven without dying (Enoch and Elijah) and one died and came back to live forever. All the rest have died and passed on into eternity.
The point of all this is to remind my readers that the time we have on earth is precious to us. It is limited. Ask yourself how your life might change if you were told by your doctor that you had only a few months, or a year or so, to live. But the scripture passage I quoted at the start of this blog post reminds us that it is presumption on our part to assume we are going to be alive to see our beds tonight. We don't know, when we wake up in the morning, if this is not going to be our last day on the earth. We could be struck down by an unknown (or known) illness, a terrorist attack, a drunken driver, or our own careless stupidity. Any number of things could happen to us. And we would find ourselves suddenly facing God.
The late Walter Martin had it right when he said "We need to live our lives as though we don't expect to see Jesus for another thousand years; we need to live each day as though we expect to see him tonight." The thing you are doing now may be the last thing you do in this life. Therefore, make it worth doing. Enjoy your time. Savor it. When you leave for work tomorrow, take time to really say something to your children. Kiss your spouse and enjoy it. You may not ever have another. Take time to smell the roses along the way. Life your life in a way that is worth living if it were to be the last thing you ever do.
Life is a gift from God. Don't squander it. Make it count for something. Make it count for God. Whether you have a lot of life left, or a short time left on earth, you don't know. That knowledge is in God's hand. But whatever time you have, use it wisely and with all your might. Live life! To the glory of God alone! But live it! And do your best to not waste a second of it. Remember, once it is gone, it is lost forever. So try not to lose any precious time.
In James 4 we are reminded of this great truth ... "Go to now, ye that say, To day or to morrow we will go into such a city, and continue there a year, and buy and sell, and get gain: Whereas ye know not what [shall be] on the morrow. For what [is] your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. For that ye [ought] to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that." (James 4: 13-15).
Time is one thing, I think, we all take for granted. We waste so much of it. And once an hour, or a minute, or a second is gone, it is gone. It can never be regained. But all of us are only granted so much life. In Job, we are told "Seeing his days [are] determined, the number of his months [are] with thee, thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass" (Job 14:5). God has our days numbered. Before we are born the Lord knows the time of our dying. It is a conceit of the young that they live under the illusion of immortality. But how many people who ought to know better still live as though they will never die. They spend their lives fighting God because they think they will never face Him. Scripture also tells us that "It is appointed unto men to die once and after this the judgment." (Heb. 9:27). In the history of the human race, only two people have gone to heaven without dying (Enoch and Elijah) and one died and came back to live forever. All the rest have died and passed on into eternity.
The point of all this is to remind my readers that the time we have on earth is precious to us. It is limited. Ask yourself how your life might change if you were told by your doctor that you had only a few months, or a year or so, to live. But the scripture passage I quoted at the start of this blog post reminds us that it is presumption on our part to assume we are going to be alive to see our beds tonight. We don't know, when we wake up in the morning, if this is not going to be our last day on the earth. We could be struck down by an unknown (or known) illness, a terrorist attack, a drunken driver, or our own careless stupidity. Any number of things could happen to us. And we would find ourselves suddenly facing God.
The late Walter Martin had it right when he said "We need to live our lives as though we don't expect to see Jesus for another thousand years; we need to live each day as though we expect to see him tonight." The thing you are doing now may be the last thing you do in this life. Therefore, make it worth doing. Enjoy your time. Savor it. When you leave for work tomorrow, take time to really say something to your children. Kiss your spouse and enjoy it. You may not ever have another. Take time to smell the roses along the way. Life your life in a way that is worth living if it were to be the last thing you ever do.
Life is a gift from God. Don't squander it. Make it count for something. Make it count for God. Whether you have a lot of life left, or a short time left on earth, you don't know. That knowledge is in God's hand. But whatever time you have, use it wisely and with all your might. Live life! To the glory of God alone! But live it! And do your best to not waste a second of it. Remember, once it is gone, it is lost forever. So try not to lose any precious time.
posted by John | Friday, September 19, 2008
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