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Don’t Waste Your Life

/ Richard Bargas / Leave a comment

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Last night, as we finished our study of Psalm 91, I pointed out that God protects us for a purpose; He preserves us with a plan. After 15 verses that describe the abundant protection of God, Psalm 91:16 ends the psalm with these words, “With long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation.”

This reminded me of a powerful illustration that John Piper gave in his book, Don’t Wast Your Life. I’ve reproduced it below. Remember, God preserves His children for His purposes, so that we will use our redeemed life in His service. Don’t waste your life.

In April 2000, Ruby Eliason and Laura Edwards were killed in Cameroon, West Africa. Ruby was over eighty. Single all her life, she poured it out for one great thing: to make Jesus Christ known among the unreached, the poor, and the sick. Laura was a widow, a medical doctor, pushing eighty years old, and serving at Ruby’s side in Cameroon. The brakes failed, the car went over a cliff, and they were both killed instantly. I asked my congregation: Was that a tragedy? Two lives, driven by one great passion, namely, to be spent in unheralded service to the perishing poor for the glory of Jesus Christ—even two decades after most of their American counterparts had retired to throw away their lives on trifles. No, that is not a tragedy. That is a glory. These lives were not wasted. And these lives were not lost. “Whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it” (Mark 8:35).

I will tell you what a tragedy is. I will show you how to waste your life. Consider a story from the February 1998 edition of Reader’s Digest, which tells about a couple who “took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30 foot trawler, play softball and collect shells.” At first, when I read it I thought it might be a joke. A spoof on the American Dream. But it wasn’t. Tragically, this was the dream: Come to the end of your life—your one and only precious, God-given life—and let the last great work of your life, before you give an account to your Creator, be this: playing softball and collecting shells. Picture them before Christ at the great day of judgment: “Look, Lord. See my shells.” That is a tragedy. And people today are spending billions of dollars to persuade you to embrace that tragic dream. Over against that, I put my protest: Don’t buy it. Don’t waste your life.

—John Piper, Don’t Waste Your Life, 45-46.

Salvation By Works Gives No Hope

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“And next I think it will be admitted by all, that the way of salvation by good works would be self-evidently unsuitable to a considerable number. I will take a case. I am sent for in an emergency, and it is the dead of night. A man is dying, smitten suddenly by the death-blast. I go to his bedside, as requested. Consciousness remains, but he is evidently in mortal agony. He has lived an ungodly life—and he is about to die. I am asked by his wife and friends to speak to him a word that may bless him. Shall I tell him that he can only be saved by good works? Where is the time for works? Where is the possibility of them? While I am speaking, his life is struggling to escape him! He looks at me in the agony of his soul, and he stammers out, ‘What must I do to be saved?’ Shall I read to him the Moral Law? Shall I expound to him the Ten Commandments and tell him that he must keep all these? He would shake his head and say, ‘I have broken them all; I am condemned by them all!’ If salvation is of works, what more have I to say? I am of no use here. What can I say? The man is utterly lost! There is no remedy for him. How can I tell him the cruel dogma of ‘modern thought’ that his own personal character is everything? How can I tell him that there is no value in belief, no help for the soul in looking to Another—even to Jesus, the Substitute? There is no whisper of hope for a dying man in the hard and stony doctrine of salvation by works!”

—CH Spurgeon

The Value of Faith in Christ

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“One grain of this faith is worth more than a diamond the size of the world—yes, though you should thread such jewels together, as many as the stars of heaven for number, they would be worth nothing compared with the smallest atom of faith in Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God!”

—CH Spurgeon

Are You Chasing Church Health or Church Growth?

/ Richard Bargas / 2 Comments

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The term recovery is used in the medical field, and that makes it appropriate for church revitalization, because our goal should be to have a healthy church. So many pastors and church leaders today are striving for church growth, but that is putting the cart before the horse. The objective should not be church growth, but church health, because growth must proceed from health.”

–Harry L. Reeder, III; From Embers to a Flame, 46.

Biblical Balance in Worship that Is Not Disconnected from Time

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“Good worship does not engage in the arrogance of modernity, which disconnects from the past, nor does it participate in the idolatry of traditionalism, which lives in the past. Rather, we should begin with the great classical worship that at one time was contemporary and has now become tried and true, and then build upon it, being ready to absorb that which is excellent in the present. Good worship is offered in spirit and in truth, honors Christ, and facilitates the praise of God’s people and the communication of the gospel to the lost. It is connected to the past without living in the past, contextualized in the present without accommodating the present, and setting a pattern to shape the future instead of becoming dated in the future.”

–Harry L. Reeder, III;  Embers to a Flame, 34-35.