More Thoughts on Wasted Life

“Living to magnify Christ is costly.” This is the opening sentence in chapter four of Don’t Waste Your Life. The name of this chapter is “Magnifying Christ Through Pain and Death.”  It is serious Christianity.  To live in such a way that Christ is first in all things….that he is obeyed no matter the cost, that he is worshiped no matter the depth of pain or loneliness, and that his opinion is first no matter how discontent I may feel….is definitely the “narrow road” of which Jesus speaks.

“…..’When Jesus calls a man he bids him come and die.’  Fleeing from death is the shortest path to a wasted life.”  The first part of this quote is from Bonhoeffer who died at 39 because he would not choose an easy life in Nazi Germany. The second part of the quote is from Piper whose life was affected by Bonhoeffer’s witness.

Am I dying to myself today in order to live for Christ?  Tough question..

Living with Purpose

Still working through Don’t Waste Your Life and wanted to share some quotes with you.

“If you want your life to count, if you want the ripple effect of the pebbles you drop to become waves that reach the ends of the earth and roll on into eternity….you have to know a few great, majestic, unchanging, obvious, simple, glorious things  –  or one great all-embracing thing– and be set on fire by them. “

“Long for your life to have eternal significance.  Want this!  Don’t coast through life without a passion.”

…”have a vision of life that is more than the emptiness of mere success or the orgy of spring break….”

“Life is wasted if we do not grasp the glory of the cross, cherish it for the treasure that it is, and cleave to it as the highest price of every pleasure and the deepest comfort in every pain.”

“Can sex and cars and work and war and changing diapers and doing taxes really have a God-exalting, soul-satisfying unity?  YES!  ….every experience in life is designed to magnify the cross of Christ.”

“And thus a cross-centered, cross-exalting,  cross-saturated life is a God-glorifying life–the only God-glorifying life.  All others are wasted.”

So what do I live for?  What propels me to get up and do the things that I do everyday?  Is it for the approval of others?  Is it for some temporal accomplishment or is it to set Christ on display?  Do I have a single passion that helps me make decisions, repent from sin, set goals, and run this race?  I can say that I want to and I need others to help my vision stay clear.  Without the church my race would have less focus.