One Life
I'll only get one life to lay down. Not in the meaninglessly poetic way this phrase is abused in...I mean in a practical way that affects my real choices with time, money, and security today.
I'll only ever get one life to fully trust in God.
I'll only get one life to fully risk on what I believe.
I am unwilling to play church with God... To play it safe hoping God is real. I'm unwilling to waste my life trying to manage the risks like everyone else. I'm looking for ways to give everything away...all my time, all my money, all my security.
If God's NOT real, the security of things are an illusion anyway. Everything is in vain if God's not real and doesn't reward those who seek Him. If God is real, then pursuing these things instead of God is the biggest waste of a life I could imagine.
I know Him enough to know He is real. I want to fully know Him. I will only know Him to the extent I trust Him and let Him reveal Himself to me.
He will never let me fall. In my experience, the further I go toward Him, the more secure I am.
Partly, I learned this from my dad. My dad worked hard 30 years to make the end of His life secure. He was really good with money, and without an education had really done well for himself...two houses, a nice retirement, savings...
He died after being retired for 6 years. As he was dying we got to talk several times about the point of life. He said he would do everything differently than he had. He would have vacationed more. He told me he felt he had wasted most of His life building something that can't be kept, and not building the things that could be.
He was like most men. He believed what the world taught was important most of his life, but then he could see clearly as he knew this life was ending in months. He told me he wished he and I could just have some more time working on things together. On his death bed he had an entirely different perspective of what was eternal...none of it had anything to do with hanging onto his time, money, or security. All of it was about more freely spending his time, money, and letting the one who owned his body deal with the security part.
I'll only ever have one life to extravagantly trust God with, and I have no idea when my chance to do that will disappear. It could be today!
I'm going to go hard after God. If He's actually who He says He is, He won't let someone like that fall anyway. If I never try, I'll never really know.
Matthew 6:25“Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?
26“Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?
27“Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?
28“So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin;
29“and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
30“Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
31“Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’
32“For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.
33“But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.
34“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
I'll only ever get one life to fully trust in God.
I'll only get one life to fully risk on what I believe.
I am unwilling to play church with God... To play it safe hoping God is real. I'm unwilling to waste my life trying to manage the risks like everyone else. I'm looking for ways to give everything away...all my time, all my money, all my security.
If God's NOT real, the security of things are an illusion anyway. Everything is in vain if God's not real and doesn't reward those who seek Him. If God is real, then pursuing these things instead of God is the biggest waste of a life I could imagine.
I know Him enough to know He is real. I want to fully know Him. I will only know Him to the extent I trust Him and let Him reveal Himself to me.
He will never let me fall. In my experience, the further I go toward Him, the more secure I am.
Partly, I learned this from my dad. My dad worked hard 30 years to make the end of His life secure. He was really good with money, and without an education had really done well for himself...two houses, a nice retirement, savings...
He died after being retired for 6 years. As he was dying we got to talk several times about the point of life. He said he would do everything differently than he had. He would have vacationed more. He told me he felt he had wasted most of His life building something that can't be kept, and not building the things that could be.
He was like most men. He believed what the world taught was important most of his life, but then he could see clearly as he knew this life was ending in months. He told me he wished he and I could just have some more time working on things together. On his death bed he had an entirely different perspective of what was eternal...none of it had anything to do with hanging onto his time, money, or security. All of it was about more freely spending his time, money, and letting the one who owned his body deal with the security part.
I'll only ever have one life to extravagantly trust God with, and I have no idea when my chance to do that will disappear. It could be today!
I'm going to go hard after God. If He's actually who He says He is, He won't let someone like that fall anyway. If I never try, I'll never really know.
Matthew 6:25“Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?
26“Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?
27“Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?
28“So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin;
29“and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
30“Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
31“Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’
32“For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.
33“But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.
34“Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
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