Living in the Light of Eternity

Proverbs 23:17-18 – “Do not let your heart envy sinners, but be zealous for the fear of the Lord all the day; For surely there is a hereafter, and your hope will not be cut off.”

There’s something way better than living in constant envy of all that this world enjoys; that is to live our lives with passion for the Lord – revering Him – living our daily lives in the light of eternity. Living each day as though it was not your ‘last’, but your ‘first’.  You see, this life is short… but in actuality it’s not.

I once was speaking to some folks and pulled out a three-hundred foot, white rope. I held one end and had someone take the other end of the rope and run down the isle with it, go out the door, and take it far outside and tie it to a tree.  Everyone in the room knew where that tree was. They knew it was a great distance away. Then I revealed that the end of the rope I was holding in my hand had a one-inch portion that I had painted bright red. I said, “This little red portion of this long rope is the equivalent to your life-span here on earth. Your birth, your life, and your death are all within this one-inch span… but look how long the rope is! It just keeps going and going, right out the door and way outside! This is what our lives are REALLY like! We have a beginning, but the truth is, we will go on living forever and ever… somewhere. When we take our last breath, it’s not over! It’s just barely even begun.”

The text says; “For surely there is a hereafter“. We must live in light of this fact. So often, our tendency is to buy into this culture’s lie that we must endeavor to ‘get all we can’… ‘live for ourselves’… ‘live for pleasure/what makes us happy’… ‘eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die’. When the truth is, we will all stand before a holy God after we’ve taken our last breath on this planet. We will have to give an account to Him, in all of His awesome holiness and power. We’ll have to look Him in His glorious face and tell Him where our ‘hope‘ really was in this life. Was it in Him… or was it in what all that the world had to offer? Keith Green (famous musician and radical follower of Jesus Christ) once said, “If Jesus went to prepare a place for us 2,000 years ago and He’s been working on it this whole time… and He created this beautiful world in only six days… man, living here is like living in a garbage can compared to what’s going on up there!” I love that.

May you and I be those that live passionate, zealous lives that revere our Lord each and every day. May we care more about what God thinks about us and less about shiny things this world has to offer. May we live each moment in the light of eternity… knowing that our ‘Hope’ is Jesus… and we’ll never be ‘cut off’ from Him!

Much love!