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Knowing your purpose prepares you for eternity. Many people spend their lives trying to create a lasting legacy on earth. They want to be remembered when they're gone. Yet, what ultimately matters most will not be what others say about your life but what God says.
What people fail to realize is that all achievements are eventually surpassed, records are broken, reputations fade, and tributes are forgotten. In college, James Dobson's goal was to become the school's tennis champion. He felt proud when his trophy was prominently placed in the school's trophy cabinet. Years later, someone mailed him that trophy. They had found it in a trashcan when the school was remodeled. Jim said, "Given enough time, all your trophies will be trashed by someone else!"
Living to create an earthly legacy is a short-sighted goal. A wiser use of time is to build an eternal legacy. You weren't put on earth to be remembered. You were put here to prepare for eternity.
One day you will stand before God, and he will do an audit of your life, a final exam, before you enter eternity. The Bible says, "Remember, each of us will stand personally before the judgment seat of God....Yes, each of us will have to give a personal account to God." Fortunately, God wants us to pass this test, so he has given us the questions in advance. From the Bible we can surmise that God will ask us two crucial questions:
First, "What did you do with my Son, Jesus Christ?" God won't ask about your religious background or doctrinal views. The only thing that will matter is, did you accept what Jesus did for you and did you learn to love and trust him? Jesus said, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
Second, "What did you do with what I gave you?" What did you do with your life—all the gifts, talents, opportunities, energy, relationships, and resources God gave you? Did you spend them on yourself, or did you use them for the purposes God made you for?"
Preparing you for these two questions is the goal of this book. The first question will determine where you spend eternity. The second question will determine what you do in eternity. By the end of this book you will be ready to answer both questions.
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DAY THREE:
THINKING ABOUT MY PURPOSE
Point to Ponder: Living on purpose is the path to peace.
Verse to Remember: "You, LORD, give perfect peace to those who keep their purpose firm and put their trust in you." Isaiah 26:3 (TEV)
Question to Consider: What would my family and friends say is the driving force of my life? What do I want it to be?
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CHAPTER FOUR
MADE TO LAST FOREVER
God has...planted eternity in the human heart. —Ecclesiastes 3:11 (NLT)
Surely God would not have created such a being as man to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality. —Abraham Lincoln
This life is not all there is.
Life on earth is just the dress rehearsal before the real production. You will spend far more time on the other side of death—in eternity—than you will here. Earth is the staging area, the preschool, the tryout for your life in eternity. It is the practice workout before the actual game; the warm-up lap before the race begins. This life is preparation for the next.
At most, you will live a hundred years on earth, but you will spend forever in eternity. Your time on earth is, as Sir Thomas Browne said, "but a small parenthesis in eternity." You were made to last forever.
The Bible says, "God has...planted eternity in the human heart."
You have an inborn instinct that longs for immortality. This is because God designed you, in his image, to live for eternity. Even though we know everyone eventually dies, death always seems unnatural and unfair. The reason we feel we should live forever is that God wired our brains with that desire!
One day your heart will stop beating. That will be the end of your body and your time on earth, but it will not be the end of you. Your earthly body is just a temporary residence for your spirit. The Bible calls your earthly body a "tent," but refers to your future body as a "house." The Bible says, "When this tent we live in—our body here on earth—is torn down, God will have a house in heaven for us to live in, a home he himself has made, which will last forever."
While life on earth offers many choices, eternity offers only two:
heaven or h ell. Your relationship to God on earth will determine your relationship to him in eternity. If you learn to love and trust God's Son, Jesus, you will be invited to spend the rest of eternity with him. On the other hand, if you reject his love, forgiveness, and salvation, you will spend eternity apart from God forever.
C. S. Lewis said, "There are two kinds of people: those who say to God Thy will be done' and those to whom God says, 'All right then, have it your way.’ Tragically, many people will have to endure eternity without God because they chose to live without him here on earth.
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