4.14.2010

Wasting Your Life

I'm meditating today on what it means to waste your life.  Last year I read John Piper's book on the subject, and just found my list of quotes from the book in my documents. 

The wasted life is the life without a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples. Pg 31
Life is wasted when we do not live for the glory of God. Pg. 32
We waste our lives when we do not pray and think and dream and plan and work toward magnifying God in all spheres of life. Pg 32
If you don’t point people to God for everlasting joy, you don’t love. You waste your life. Pg 35

Every one of these quotes is blunt, to the point, and hard hitting.  In every moment our prevailing thought and desire needs to be "how can I glorify God through this?" And if there is not a way, don't do it!
I want my life to be characterized by passion: a passion to glorify God.  How often I fall short! How often I waste minutes, hours, days!  Life is short.
You don’t have to know a lot of things for your life to make a lasting difference in the world. But you do have to know the few great things that matter, perhaps just one, and then be willing to live for them and die for them. Pg 44  (emphasis mine)

Desire that your life count for something great! Long for your life to have eternal significance. Want this! Don’t coast through life without a passion. Pg 46 (emphasis mine)

If we do not learn with Paul the Christ-exalting paradoxes of life, we will squander our days pursuing bubbles that burst. Pg 63

 
 Don't squander your days pursuing bubbles. As C.S. Lewis said, “Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours.” And Jim Elliot agreed, "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose."
You have been bought with a price, and you are not your own.  The purpose of your life is to glorify God and lift Him up!  Do not try to live life for yourself...you will not find joy.  The joyful, meaningful, passionate, fulfilling, Christ-exalting life is the only one that satisfies, and is the only one that counts for eternity.
 
God does not call us to ease, but to faithful joy. He is closing in on some of you, smiling and with tears in his eyes, knowing how much of himself he is going to show you—and how much it will cost.

1 comment:

Hannah Leary said...

I am in the middle of reading "Don't Waste Your Life" and have been pondering about these same truths! God has been convicting me to more fully glorify God in every detail of life too. How much we fall short of this! I'm soooo thankful for a God of mercy, who loves us no matter what! Thanks for sharing :).