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Life Application Pastor's Desk wisdom for living

How not to waste your life

Beloved: grace, mercy and peace be yours forever from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord. I am delighted to welcome you into another week in the month of June 2020. And my prayer is that your heart will be filled with the perfect knowledge of the will of God for you in every situation of your life in the week and all through the remaining part of this year, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Now why is it important that you know the exact will of God for you in everything you do? It is so that you will not live a foolish life. Paul says in his letter to the Ephesians, “Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.” (Eph 5:17NIV) Did you see that? It is foolishness not to know the mind of God about life in general and how to conduct ourselves in response to it. If we don’t know what God thinks of life as a whole and how we are to handle it, then, there is no way we will be able to live our lives to please Him. And if our lives are not lived to please Him, then, we have wasted them.

See, God did not create us to live for ourselves. Nobody creates anything for that thing to exist for itself. Rather, we create things (machines, organisations, systems, processes and so forth) to serve our purposes. And if they are not going to serve the purpose for which we create them, we end them. In the same vein, God created us to live for Him; He created us to live to bring Him pleasure. And that is one point that everyone in this world needs to get. You have been not created to live for yourself. You have not been created to live for your husband or wife. You have not been created to live for your friends, neighbours or colleagues at work or in school. In short, you have not been created to live for any created being or thing. The only person you have been created to live for is the one that created you, and that is God. (Cf. Rom 14:7-8; Rev 4:11)

If you, then, believe that God is your creator, then, your most important goal in this life must be to live to bring Him pleasure. Yes, in bringing Him pleasure, you are also going to be bringing pleasure to many other people in your life. But essentially, He is the one you have been created to delight. And if you are not living to bring Him pleasure, then, you are not fulfilling His purpose for creating you. Therefore, you are wasting your life and are in danger of being permanently and forever discarded by Him.

Unfortunately, many today are wasting their lives without knowing it. They are wasting their lives because they are not living them for God. They are wasting their lives because they are not living them in the will of God. Yes, they may be good and kind people, individuals who are doing their very best to make the world pleasant for themselves and others to live in. But as long as they are not doing what they are doing on the basis of faith in God and a desire to please Him, they are not living for Him but for themselves. They may not even agree that it is themselves they are living for and say that it is other people they are living for. But the truth is that in doing whatever they are doing for others, it is still themselves they are trying to please and satisfy. And since it is themselves they are living to please and satisfy, they are not fulfilling God’s purpose for creating them. They are merely wasting their lives. And they are never going to get His praise on the day that He rewards all men.

Now I don’t want to want to waste my life in this world. Rather, I want to live it to earn the praise of the one who created me. And I am sure you too won’t want to waste your life but will want it to count for something before God, when all has been said and done. But we are going to waste our lives, if we do not live them in the will of God. And if we do not want to live our lives outside the will of God, then, we need to know His will, which takes us back to what Paul says. He says, “Do not be foolish but understand the will of God.”

How, then, do we know the will of God for us in this life? First, it is by continually asking Him to reveal it to us, that is, in prayer (Col 1:9-12). And since He has said everyone who asks receives, we can be sure that if we ask Him to make His will known to us about life, He will do so and do so according to our needs. Second, we can know His will by giving ourselves to the Holy Scriptures. Paul says every scripture is inspired of God to teach us, correct us, rebuke us and train us in righteousness, to the end that we may be perfect and thoroughly furnished to know and do the will of God in all things (2Tim 3:16-17). So, give yourself to the Scriptures.

Third, we can know God’s will through fellowship with other children of His. We have not been called by God to live alone but to live in His family. And it is only as we truly fellowship with other members of this family that we can attain perfection in our knowledge of God and of His will. So, take your fellowship with other people of God, especially those of your local assembly seriously. And as you devote yourself to these things, may your heart be continually flooded with the absolute knowledge of God’s will for you in all things, so that you may not waste your life. (Cf. Eph 4:9-16)

Do have a great week.

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