child at heart

As I sit here on the computer listening to my brother and ollie play guitar hero for songs on end I am reminded that much more of how we are called to be good stewards of our time… and not waste our life.

At one point I had read most of the book “Don’t waste your life” by John Piper and the main focus on the book is spending all your time working for the Lord and not spending it doing just junk to pass the time. I love this quote that is in the book, it really did make an impact on my life at that time. “Only one life, ‘Twill soon be past; Only what’s done for Christ will last.” At that point in my life I was not listening to the call of missions placed on my life… actually I wasn’t listening to ANY call on my life. I was just bee bopping on through and kinda just watching everything pass me by. When I look back now I can already seen many wasted years in my life and it bothers me so much.

As I look through this book and try to remember the things my small group talked about as we went through it I can tell I wasn’t even really paying attention, I was wasting my life and their time. This poem is in the book, and it symbolizes, I feel, where I am at in my Christian walk right now. “Long I sought for the earth’s hidden meaning; Long as a youth was my search in vain. Now as I approach my last years waning, My search I must begin again.” Obviously I am not in my last years, although I could be.. the Lord has numbered my days, but I feel like I have started searching again because I finally see the mess I have made of my life in living the days in vain.

“As it is said, Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in rebellion.” -Hebrews 3:15

“Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.” -2 Corinthians 5:20 The underlined is by far my favorite part of that verse. How comforting is it to know that everything Christ does in our life is by His divine plan. I can do nothing to make it any better and I can do nothing to screw it up. How amazing is that?

Shawn talked about this in the sermon yesterday morning, how when someone dies SO much more of who they are comes out. Things they refused to talk about in life are told from others and how much they were impacted (either good or bad) from your life. The blessings they placed on other people around them, the ways other people can see how much the Lord ruled their minds and decisions. My cry is that I will not be a nowhere man, I will not live my days without sharing Christ in my actions and my words. “He’s a real nowhere man, Sitting in his nowhere land, Making all his nowhere plans, For nobody, Doesn’t have a point of view, Knows not where he’s going to, Isn’t he a bit like you and me?”

The Lord is so good in pointing out things to me that I need to hear. For example I am looking through the Piper book for things for this post and I came across this verse reference, Hebrews 4:16 which says “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” WOW! That’s just what I needed to hear Re: post about struggling. Praise Him for point out the marvelous things in His word.

I am not really sure what the main theme of this post is anymore, I started off with something in my mind and through rereading my notes and things in this book the Lord has revealed so much more to me again. How awesome is that, and how wonderful do I feel.

The rest of this post is going to be things out of the book that really spoke to me then (when I paid attention) as well as re pricking my heart right now.

“God ordained a redemptive history whose sequence fully displays his glory so that, at the end, the greatest possible number of people would have had the historical antecedents necessary to engender [the most] fervent love for God… The one thing God is doing in all redemptive history is to show forth his mercy in such a way that the greatest number of  people will throughout eternity delight in him with all their heart, strength, and mind… When the earth of the new creation is filled with such people, then God’s purpose in showing forth his mercy will have been achieved… All the events of redemptive history and their meaning as recorded in the Bible compost a unity in that they conjoin to bring about this goal.” [p.27-28]

Contained in these sentences were the seed of my future. The driving passion of my life was rooted here. One of the sees was in the word “glory” – God’s aim in history was to “fully display his glory.” Another seed was in the word “delight” – God’s aim was that his people “delight in him with all their heart.” The passion of my life has been to understand and live and teach and preach how these two aims of God relate to each other – indeed, how they are not two, but one.

It was becoming clearer and clearer that if I wanted to come to the end of my life and not say, “I’ve wasted it!” then I would need to press all the way in, and all the way up, to the ultimate purpose of God and join him in it. If my life was to have a single, all-satisfying, unifying passion, it would have to be God’s passion. And, if Daniel Fuller [he wrote the above quote by the way] was right, God’s passion was the display of his own glory and the delight of my heart. [p. 28]

If we try to display the excellence of God without joy in it, we will display a shell of hypocrisy and create scorn or legalism. But if we claim to enjoy his excellence and do not display it for others to see and admire, we deceive ourselves, because the mark of God enthralled joy is to overflow and expand by extending itself into the hearts of others. The wasted life is the life without passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples. [p.31] [I pray that my life will be full of this passion and joy, Lord help me to have that solely in you!]

Life is wasted when we do not live for the glory of God. And I mean all of life. It is all for his glory. We waste our lives when we do not pray and think and dream and plan and work towards magnifying God in all spheres of life. God’s aim is not that we merely admire his gifts, but, even more, his glory.

“You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your hand are pleasures forevermore. -Psalm 16:11