Sometimes people use the expression that they’re either eating to live or living to eat. Many people live to play sports, live to work, or live to adventure.
What they often don’t realize is that if they’re living for something, they’re also dying for it. We get older day by day and slowly use our lives up for the things we consider important. Some things even do kill the people that serve them. Some people that live to eat, die to eat because the habits that control them slowly claim their health and they’re sacrificing their live slowly away to food or addictions or video games.
If they had to give their life up for it right now, they might see it with a different perspective. Somehow, stretched over years and time, sacrifice gets clouded in the mind and loses its intensity. The years fly by so fast.
All of us are alive and giving ourselves day by day to something. If you had to pick something to die for today, what would it be? I’d suggest that the only thing worth dying for is what will matter in eternity after the morning mist or our lives here is over. What is worth dying for is worth living for as well.
I’ve thought about what my obituary will look like. It might seem gloomy for a 23 year old to be thinking about their obituary but we’re never guaranteed how much time we will have here in this world. What will I want to be said about me? That she loved selflessly and lived to glory and magnify Christ or that she lived consumed in her job and hobbies? Will it matter if I had a lot of money or was well known, or had a successful job? No. These things aren’t bad things in themselves but if they’re what I’m looking to satisfy my heart like only Jesus can they are. Many people “gained the world and lost their soul.” I earnestly long for it to be said of me what the Apostle Paul was able to say at the end of his life, “I have finished my course; I have kept the faith.”
So far, this post has carried a sober tone, and that’s because it’s a serious topic. But I want to encourage you to press on for Jesus, because it’s so worth it. He’s so worth it! Don’t lose hope and don’t think that what you do doesn’t matter! We’re designed to be fully satisfied in Christ and find our fulfillment in Him. Living surrendered to Him is the best way to live! It’s not always easy or comfortable but it’s what you are designed for. We don’t know exactly what will take place during the rest of our lives and what we’ll accomplish but if our goal is to glorify Christ (and if we live with that goal in mind day by day and let it influence our actions, decisions, love, worship & service) at the end our of our lives we won’t regret it.
Great advice! Well said!