Rev. Aaron Long: What are you doing with your life
What are you doing with your life? We are only given so many days to walk this globe, what are you doing with them? To many people live lives of desperate despair, of frivolous waste, and of empty pleasure seeking. Lives such as these are wasted in the eternal perspective.
Sitting around and seeking only self gratification and please seems like fun in the beginning, hedonism has a certain upside when we look at it at first. We seek the pleasures of the flesh, whether it be sex, or food, alcohol or drugs and it makes us happy for a moment, but it is a high that is only temporary and leaves us feeling more empty than before. This sort of pleasure seeking ends up being a constant chase after the high and ends in a life of dissolution and death as we burn the spark of life out that we were given at our birth.
Lives of quiet despair, simply moving from one day to the next, end up being a long, tiring grind that wears down our minds and joints with mindless, pointless repletion. Whether it is working in a factory, on a farm or in a boardroom, this sort of life of chasing after money or status leaves us empty because in it, we never reach the top of the mountain we are climbing. We always are chasing after one more dollar, one more award, one more chance to stand in the sun and guess what, we still die an we can take none of these treasures with us.
Live of frivolous waste end up the worst of all because we are never happy. If self-gratification gives you temporary moments of pleasure, and quiet despair gives you awards to look at, frivolous waste, or keeping up with the in crowd, being fashionable is a never-ending struggle for the next and newest thing. There is never an end to what keeps coming across the runway at a fashion show, or the newest car or finest house. Keeping up with the jones’ is nothing more than an endless circle of one upmanship that leaves you with nothing at all in the end but junk.
So, what should we be doing with our lives? Jesus says in the gospels that we are to store up our treasures in heaven, to seek first the kingdom of God. Jesus says, he who would save his life shall lose ip, but he who gives up his life for My sake shall find it eternally. We should be spending our lives loving God and loving neighbor.
We should spend our lives learning about God, reading the bible, walking with the church, praying, in short worshiping the one who made us. There is a hole in our heart that was made by God and can only be filled with God.
We should be serving and loving our neighbor. We should dedicate our lives to living for others, sacrificing for others, building others up and serving those around us.
The greatest impact you can make, the greatest gift you can give yourself is to pour yourself out for the sake of the gospel, for the sake of Jesus Christ. What are you doing with your life? If it is not serving Jesus Christ, it is a waste that will lead only to hell. But if it is in service to God and neighbor, under the instruction of the infallible bible, within the visible church your life will echo on into eternity.
