1. The Bible says, “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). I have written this book to help you taste those words as sweet instead of bitter or boring. You are in one of two groups: Either you are a Christian, or God is now calling you to be one. You would not have picked up this book if God were not at work in your life.
3. If you are not yet a Christian, that is what Jesus Christ offers: doubly belonging to God, and being able to do what you were made for. That may not sound exciting. Glorifying God may mean nothing to you. That’s why I tell my story in the first two chapters, called “Created for Joy.” It was not always plain to me that pursuing God’s glory would be virtually the same as pursuing my joy. Now I see that millions of people waste their lives because they think these paths are two and not one.
4. There is a warning. The path of God-exalting joy will cost you your life. Jesus said, “Whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.” In other words, it is better to lose your life than to waste it. If you live gladly to make others glad in God, your life will be hard, your risks will be high, and your joy will be full. This is not a book about how to avoid a wounded life, but how to avoid a wasted life.
for Christ will last.
1. What would it mean to waste my life? That was a burning question. Or, more positively, what would it mean to live well—not to waste life, but to . . .? How to finish that sentence was the question. I was not even sure how to put the question into words, let alone what the answer might be. What was the opposite of not wasting my life? “To be successful in a career”? Or “to be maximally happy”? Or “to accomplish something great?” Or “to find the deepest meaning and significance”? Or “to help as many people as possible”? Or “to serve Christ to the full”? Or “to glorify God in all I do”? Or was there a point, a purpose, a focus, an essence to life that would fulfill every one of those dreams?
2. God is there. Not in here, defined and shaped by my own desires. God is out there. Objective. Absolute Reality. All that looks like reality to us is dependent on God. There is creation and Creator, nothing more. And creation gets all its meaning and purpose from God.
1. If there is only one life to live in this world, and if it is not to be wasted, nothing seemed more important to me than finding out what God really meant in the Bible, since He inspired men to write it.
2. The verses of the Bible are not strung pearls but links in a chain. The writers developed unified patterns of thought. They reasoned. “Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD” (Isaiah 1:18). This meant that, in each paragraph of Scripture, one should ask how each part related to the other parts in order to say one coherent thing.
3. One of the seeds was in the word “glory”—God’s aim in history was to “fully display His glory.” Another seed was in the word “delight”—God’s aim was that His people “delight in Him with all their heart”. Enjoying God supremely is one way to glorify Him. Enjoying God makes Him look supremely valuable.
CHAPTER 3: BOASTING ONLY IN THE CROSS, THE BLAZING CENTER OF THE GLORY OF GOD
1. The opposite of wasting your life is living life by a single God-exalting, soul-satisfying passion. The well-lived life must be God-exalting and soul-satisfying because that is why God created us (Isaiah 43:7; Psalm 90:14).
Living for the glory of God must mean living for the glory of Christ crucified. Christ is the image of God. He is the sum of God’s glory in human form. And His beauty shines most brightly at His darkest hour.
2. “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). That is astonishing, when you think of all the varied things Paul did, in fact, talk about. There must be a sense in which “Jesus Christ and Him crucified” is the ground and sum of everything else he says. He is pushing us to see our lives with a single focus, and for the cross of Christ to be that focus.
Desire that your life count for something great! Long for your life to have eternal significance. Want this! Don’t coast through life without a passion.
“Because I was created by God and for His glory, I will magnify Him as I respond to His great love. My desire is to make knowing and enjoying God the passionate pursuit of my life” (Louie Giglio).
Isaiah 26:8 NIV—“Yes, LORD, walking in the way of Your laws, we wait for You; Your name and renown are the desire of our hearts“.
“Whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ” (Philippians 3:7-8). One thing matters: Know Christ, and gain Christ. Everything is rubbish in comparison to this.
3. You may ask, “What’s the key for linking up with this reality? How can this be mine? How can I be among the dead who are alive with Christ and who see and savor and spread the glory of the cross?” The answer is implied in the words about faith in Galatians 2:20. “The life I now live . . . I live by faith in the Son of God”. That is the link. God links you to His Son by faith. And when He does, there is a union with the Son of God so that His death becomes your death and His life becomes your life.
4. Christ is the glory of God. His blood-soaked cross is the blazing center of that glory. By it He bought for us every blessing—temporal and eternal. And we don’t deserve any. He bought them all. Because of Christ’s cross, God’s elect are destined to be sons of God. Because of His cross, the wrath of God is taken away. Because of His cross all guilt is removed, and sins are forgiven, and perfect righteousness is imputed to us, and the love of God is poured out in our hearts by the Spirit, and we are being conformed to the image of Christ.
5. Therefore every enjoyment in this life and the next that is not idolatry is a tribute to the infinite value of the cross of Christ—the burning center of the glory of God. And thus a cross-centered, cross-exalting, cross-saturated life is a God-glorifying life—the only God-glorifying life. All others are wasted.
CHAPTER 4: MAGNIFYING CHRIST THROUGH PAIN AND DEATH
1. Living to magnify Christ is costly. This is not surprising. He was crucified. He was treated like a devil. And he calls us to follow Him. “If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me” (Mark 8:34). But suffering with Jesus on the Calvary road of love is not merely the result of magnifying Christ; it is also the means. He is made supreme when we are so satisfied in Him that we can “let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also” and suffer for the sake of love.
He loves us. And love does not mean making much of us or making life easy. It means making us able to enjoy making much of Him forever—no matter what it costs.
2. The normal Christian life is one that boasts only in the cross—the blazing center of God’s glory—and does it while bearing the cross. “Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple” (Luke 14:27). Suffering is God’s design in this sin-soaked world (Romans 8:20). It portrays sin’s horror for the world to see. It punishes sin’s guilt for those who do not believe in Christ. It breaks sin’s power for those who take up their cross and follow Jesus. And because sin is the belittling of the all-satisfying glory of God, the suffering that breaks its power is a severe mercy.
“The cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise God-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die” (The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer).
3. Whenever something is of tremendous value to you, and you cherish its beauty or power or uniqueness, you want to draw others’ attention to it and waken in them the same joy. That is why Paul’s all-consuming goal in life was for Christ to be magnified. Christ was of infinite value to Paul, and so Paul longed for others to see and savor this value. That is what it means to magnify Christ—to show the magnitude of his value.
4. Verse 23 shows why dying is gain for Paul: “My desire is to depart [that is, to die] and be with Christ, for that is far better.” That is what death does: It takes us into more intimacy with Christ. We depart, and we are with Christ, and that, Paul says, is gain. And when you experience death this way, Paul says, you exalt Christ. Experiencing Christ as gain in your dying magnifies Christ. It is “far better” than living here.
God’s glory shines more brightly when He satisfies us in times of loss than when He provides for us in times of plenty.
“More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope” (Romans 5:3-4).
5. May we try to escape? Thou mayest do in this as it is in thy heart. If it is in thy heart to fly, fly: if it be in thy heart to stand, stand. Any thing but a denial of the truth. The man himself is best able to judge concerning his present strength, and what weight this or that argument has upon his heart to stand or fly. . . . Do not fly out of a slavish fear, but rather because flying is an ordinance of God, opening a door for the escape of some, which door is opened by God’s providence, and the escape countenanced by God’s Word. Matthew 10:23. . . . If, therefore, when thou hast fled, thou art taken, be not offended at God or man: not at God, for thou art his servant, thy life and thy all are his; not at man, for he is but God’s rod, and is ordained, in this, to do thee good. I mean, be pleased which way soever things shall go, for that the scales are still in God’s hand.
6. Jesus said to Paul in pain—and to all of us who treasure him more than pain-free living—“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:8). Paul had learned what love is. Love is not Christ’s making much of us or making life easy. Love is doing what He must do, at great cost to Himself (and often to us), to enable us to enjoy making much of Him forever. So Paul responds to Christ’s design, “Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10).
7. What a tragic waste when people turn away from the Calvary road of love and suffering. All the riches of the glory of God in Christ are on that road. All the sweetest fellowship with Jesus is there. All the treasures of assurance. All the ecstasies of joy. All the clearest sightings of eternity. All the noblest camaraderie. All the humblest affections. All the most tender acts of forgiving kindness. All the deepest discoveries of God’s Word. All the most earnest prayers. They are all on the Calvary road where Jesus walks with his people. Take up your cross and follow Jesus. On this road, and this road alone, life is Christ and death is gain. Life on every other road is wasted.
CHAPTER 5: RISK IS RIGHT—BETTER TO LOSE YOUR LIFE THAN TO WASTE IT
1. I define risk very simply as an action that exposes you to the possibility of loss or injury. If you take a risk you can lose money, you can lose face, you can lose your health or even your life. And what’s worse, if you take a risk, you may endanger other people and not just yourself. Their lives may be at stake. Losing life is not always the same as wasting it. What if the circumstances are such that not taking a risk will result in loss and injury? It may not be wise to play it safe. And what if a successful risk would bring great benefit to many people, and its failure would bring harm only to yourself? It may not be loving to choose comfort or security when something great may be achieved for the cause of Christ and for the good of others.
2. Then comes this great word in 2 Samuel 10:12: “Be of good courage, and let us be courageous for our people, and for the cities of our God, and may the LORD do what seems good to Him”. It means that Joab had made a strategic decision for the cities of God, and he did not know how it would turn out. He had no special revelation from God on this issue. He had to make a decision on the basis of sanctified wisdom. He had to risk or run. He did not know how it would turn out. So he made his decision, and he handed the results over to God. And this was right.
3. Life was hard for Jesus, and He said it would be hard for His followers. “Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you” (John 15:20). So Peter warned the churches of Asia that mistreatment would be normal. “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you” (1 Peter 4:12-14).
It is costly to follow Christ. There is risk everywhere. But, this very risk is the means by which the value of Christ shines more brightly.
4. The power and the motive behind taking risks for the cause of God is not heroism, or the lust for adventure, or the courage of self reliance, or the need to earn God’s good will, but rather faith in the all-providing, all-ruling, all-satisfying Son of God, Jesus Christ. The strength to risk losing face for the sake of Christ is the faith that God’s love will lift up your face in the end and vindicate your cause. The strength to risk losing money for the cause of the Gospel is the faith that we have a treasure in the heavens that cannot fail. The strength to risk losing life in this world is faith in the promise that he who loses his life in this world will save it for the age to come.
5. Paul says that the love of Christ for us does not eliminate our suffering. On the contrary, our very attachment to Christ will bring suffering. What is Paul’s answer to his own question in Romans 8:35: “Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword separate us from the love of Christ?” His answer in verse 37 is a resounding NO! But don’t miss the implication of the question: The reason these things will not separate us from the love of Christ is not because they don’t happen to people whom Christ loves. They do. Paul’s quoting of Psalm 44:22 shows that these things do in fact happen to Christ’s people. “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered”. In other words, Christ’s love for us does not spare us these sufferings. Risk is real. The Christian life is a painful life. Not joyless. But not painless either.
CHAPTER 6: THE GOAL OF LIFE—GLADLY MAKING OTHERS GLAD IN GOD
1. It is impossible to risk your life to make others glad in God if you are an unforgiving person. If you are wired to see other people’s faults and failures and offenses, and treat them roughly, you will not take risks for their joy. This wiring—and it is universal in all human beings—must be dismantled. We will not gladly risk to make people glad in God if we hate them, or hold grudges against them, or are repelled by their faults and foibles. We must become forgiving people.
Do we lean toward mercy? Do we default to grace? Do we have a forgiving spirit? Without it we will walk away from need and waste our lives.
2. The biblical motive for being a forgiving person may be deeper than being forgiven. It is true to say: The motive for being a forgiving person is that we have been forgiven by God when we did not deserve it.
“Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32). But the bottom of this motive is not God’s forgiveness, but what God’s forgiveness gives. It gives us God.
3. If God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him, then living for the glory of God must mean that we live to gladly make others glad in God. Our gladness and our pursuit of their gladness glorifies God. And since gladness in God is the greatest and most lasting happiness, pursuing it is also love. Since the same joy in God both satisfies man and glorifies God, we never have to choose between the motive to love people or to glorify God. By gladly pursuing the gladness of others in God—even at the cost of our lives—we love them and honor God. This is the opposite of a wasted life.
CHAPTER 7: LIVING TO PROVE HE IS MORE PRECIOUS THAN LIFE
1. “Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you” (Psalm 63:3). To do this we must make sacrificial life choices rooted in the assurance that magnifying Christ through generosity and mercy is more satisfying than selfishness. If we walk away from risk to keep ourselves safe and solvent, we will waste our lives.
Jesus loves faith-filled risk for the glory of God.
2. Jesus’ emphasis on money and possessions is picked up throughout the New Testament. There are the stories in the book of Acts (“
They were selling their possessions . . . and distributing the proceeds . . . as any had need,” Acts 2:45)..There are the words.of the apostle Paul (
“In a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity. . . . God loves a cheerful giver,” 2 Corinthians 8:2; 9:7). There are the words of James, the brother of Jesus (
“Its flower falls, and its beauty perishes. So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits,” James 1:11). If we want to make people glad in God, our lives must look as if God, not possessions, is our joy. Our lives must look as if we use our possessions to make people glad in God—especially the most needy.
3. If we are going to pay the price and take the risks it will cost to make people glad in God, we move beyond the avoidance ethic. This way of life is utterly inadequate to waken people to the beauty of Christ. Avoiding fearful trouble and forbidden behaviors impresses almost no one. The avoidance ethic by itself is not Christ-commending or God-glorifying. There are many disciplined unbelievers who avoid the same behaviors Christians do. Jesus calls us to something far more radical than that.
The Bible says, “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). How can I portray God as glorious in this action? How can I enjoy making much of Him in this behavior?
4. The greatest cause in the world is joyfully rescuing people from hell, meeting their earthly needs, making them glad in God, and doing it with a kind, serious pleasure that makes Christ look like the Treasure He is. No war on earth was ever fought for a greater cause or a greater king.
5. If we would dream and if we would pray, would not God answer? Would He withhold from us a life of joyful love and mercy and sacrifice that magnifies Christ and makes people glad in God? I plead with you, as I pray for myself, set your face like flint to join Jesus on the Calvary road. “Let us go to Him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city that is to come” (Hebrews 13:13-14). When they see our sacrificial love—radiant with joy—will they not say, “Christ is great”?
CHAPTER 8: MAKING MUCH OF CHRIST FROM 8 TO 5
1. The war is not primarily spatial or physical—though its successes and failures have physical effects. Therefore, the secular vocations of Christians are a war zone. There are spiritual adversaries to be defeated (that is, evil spirits and sins, not people); and there is beautiful moral high ground to be gained for the glory of God. You don’t waste your life by where you work, but how and why.
"We were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone’s bread without paying for it, but with toil and labor we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you. . . . If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies" (2 Thessalonians 3:7-11).
2. The call to be a Christian was not a call to leave your secular vocation. That’s the clear point of 1 Corinthians 7:17-24. Paul sums up his teaching there with these words: “So, brothers, in whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God” (verse 24). Paul had a high view of the providence of God—that God had sovereignly “assigned” or “called” unbelievers to positions in life where their conversion would have significant impact for his glory. “Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him” (verse 17).
3. Our aim is to joyfully magnify Christ—to make Him look great by all we do. Boasting only in the cross, our aim is to enjoy making much of Him by the way we work. The question is, how?
• We can make much of God in our secular job through the fellowship that we enjoy with Him throughout the day in all our work
We enjoy God’s being there for us as we listen to His voice, and talk to Him, and cast all our burdens on Him, and experience His guidance and care. Christians do not just go to work. They go to work “with God.” They do not just do a job. They do their job “with God.” God is with them.
• We make much of Christ in our secular work by the joyful, trusting, God-exalting design of our creativity and industry
There must be more to our God-honoring work than such creativity and industry—unless we are willing to say that we glorify God with our work no differently than the animals.
• We make much of Christ in our secular work when it confirms and enhances the portrait of Christ’s glory that people hear in the spoken Gospel
So one crucial meaning of our secular work is that the way we do it will increase or decrease the attractiveness of the Gospel we profess before unbelievers.
• We make much of Christ in our secular work by earning enough money to keep us from depending on others, while focusing on the helpfulness of our work rather than financial rewards
The essence of work was not sustenance of life. God gave Himself as the sustainer. Man was free, not from work, but in work, to be creative without the anxiety of providing food and clothing. He says, “Be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:58).
• We make much of Christ in our secular work by earning money with the desire to use our money to make others glad in God
In Acts 20:35 Paul refers to his own manual labor and then says, “In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He Himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive’”.
• We make much of Christ in our secular work by treating the web of relationships it creates as a gift of God to be loved by sharing the Gospel and by practical deeds of help
Speaking the good news of Christ is part of why God put you in your job. He has woven you into the fabric of others’ lives so that you will tell them the Gospel. Without this, all our adorning behavior may lack the one thing that could make it life-giving.
God made man in His own image so that He would be seen and enjoyed and honored through what man does.
4. Idleness does not grow in the soil of fellowship with God. Therefore, people who spend their lives mainly in idleness or frivolous leisure are rarely as happy as those who work.
Work with an eye not mainly to your money, but your usefulness. Work with a view to benefiting people with what you make or do.
5. Secular work is not a waste when we make much of Christ from 8 to 5. God’s will in this age is that His people be scattered like salt and light in all legitimate vocations. His aim is to be known, because knowing Him is life and joy. He does not call us out of the world. He does not remove the need to work. If your work creates a web of redemptive relationships and becomes an adornment for the Gospel of the glory of Christ, your satisfaction will last forever and God will be exalted in your joy.
CHAPTER 9: THE MAJESTY OF CHRIST IN MISSION AND MERCY— A PLEA TO THIS GENERATION
1. God does not call us to ease, but to faithful joy. He is closing in on some of you, smiling and with tears in His eyes, knowing how much of Himself He is going to show you—and how much it will cost. As I write, I pray that you will not turn away.
2. Love always wants what is best for the needy, and what’s best is enjoying God fully and forever. God is only praised where He is prized. We pay our tribute to Him when He is a Treasure to us. You cannot love man or honor God without doing both. This single passion—to see that Christ be glorified as perishing people become eternally satisfied in Him—drives the great global enterprise we call world missions.
Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you
always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20).
3. The ultimate aim of world missions is that God would create, by His Word, worshippers who glorify His name through glad-hearted faith and obedience. Missions exists because worship doesn’t. When this age is over, and the countless millions of the redeemed fall on their faces before the throne of God, missions will be no more. It is a temporary necessity. But worship abides forever. Worship, therefore, is the fuel and the goal of missions.
4. Let no one who is devoted to local ministry or to crucial secular engagement take offense at this plea. Rather rejoice. You are free to stay or free to go. Many of you must stay. Your staying is crucial for God’s purposes where you are, and it is crucial for His purposes where you are not, but where others may go. There is no need for guilt or resentment. There is great need for joyful partnership.
Oh, my dear Christians! If you would be like Christ, give much, give often, give freely, to the vile and poor, the thankless and the undeserving. Christ is glorious and happy and so will you be. It is not your money I want, but your happiness. Remember His own word, “It is more blessed to give than to receive”.
5. So “pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest” (Matthew 9:38), and ask Him if you should be one. Expect this prayer to change you. When Jesus told His disciples to pray it, the next thing that happened was that He appointed twelve to be His apostles and sent them out. Pray for harvesters, and you may become one. God often wakens desire, and gives gifts, and opens doors when we are praying and pondering real possibilities and real needs.
6. Many of you are simply not satisfied with what you are doing. Every job has its discouragements and its seasons of darkness. We must not interpret such experiences automatically as a call to leave our post. But if the discontent with your present situation is deep, recurrent, and lasting, and if that discontent grows in Bible-saturated soil, God may be calling you to a new work. If, in your discontent, you long to be holy, to walk pleasing to the Lord, and to magnify Christ with your one, brief life, then God may indeed be loosening your roots in order to transplant you to a place and a ministry where the deep spiritual ambitions of your soul can be satisfied. It is true that God can be known and enjoyed in every legitimate vocation; but when He deploys you from one place to the next, He offers fresh and deeper drinking at the fountain of His fellowship. God seldom calls us to an easier life, but always calls us to know more of Him and drink more deeply of His sustaining grace.
7. Big issues are in the offing. May God help you. May God free you. May God give you a fresh, Christ-exalting vision for your life—whether you go to an unreached people or stay firmly and fruitfully at your present post. May your vision get its meaning from God’s great purpose to make the nations glad in Him. May the cross of Christ be your only boast, and may you say, with sweet confidence, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
CHAPTER 10: MY PRAYER— LET NONE SAY IN THE END, "I'VE WASTED IT"
1. Your steadfast love, O Lord, is better than life. You have told us this in many ways. With these very words you have said it through the mouth of your servant David: “Because Your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise You”. You have said it in the words of Your apostle Paul, when he cried out in prison, “My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better”. O Lord, how much better You are than life! Does Your apostle Paul not use strong language! Not just “better,” but “far better”. You are so much better than life that your apostle says death is gain. “To live is Christ, and to die is gain”. To lose everything this world can offer and be left with You alone is gain.
2. How could I, Lord, have ever been so blind to think that being loved by You means making much of me and not Yourself? Love is this: At great expense You made Yourself my glory and my boast. The cost was infinite by which You made Yourself the Treasure of my life. You sent Your Son, the blazing center of Your beauty and Your love. You gave Him up to mockery, betrayal, thorns, the whip, the rod, the fists, the nails, the shame, and death. For what? To swallow up Your wrath, and satisfy Your righteousness, and bury all my sins as far as east is from the west and in the deepest sea, so that I might come home and see the galaxy. This is Your love, O God, not to make much of me, but do whatever must be done so that I waken to the joy of making much of You through all eternity.
3. Grant us to hear and heed another call: “Lay up your treasure not on earth, but in the place where moth and thief will never come. Make treasures for yourself that cannot fail“. But then we ask, “What treasures, Lord?” We see You smile. “I am your Treasure and your great Reward. I am your food, your drink, your festal garments and your everlasting gain. I am your life and your all-satisfying Joy“.
4. A greater weight of glory waits to be enjoyed for those who grow in love to Christ. And what is love to Christ? It is the cherishing of all you are for us in Him. It is the treasuring of His perfection over all the treasures of the world. It is delighting in His fellowship beyond all family and friends. It is embracing all His promise that there will be more pleasure in his presence than from all the lying promises of sin. It is a gladness in the present taste of glory and the hope of future fullness when we see Him face to face. It is a quiet peace along the path He chooses for us with its pain. It is a being satisfied that nothing comes to us in vain.
5. Forbid that any, Lord, who read these words would have to say someday, “I’ve wasted it”. But grant, by Your almighty Spirit and Your piercing Word, that we who name Christ as the Lord would treasure Him above our lives, and feel, deep in our souls, that Christ is life and death is gain. And so may we display His worth for all to see. And by our prizing Him may He be praised in all the world. May He be magnified in life and death. May every neighborhood and nation see how joy in Jesus frees His people from the power of greed and fear.
Take your honored place, O Christ, as the all-satisfying Treasure of the world. With trembling hands before the throne of God, and utterly dependent on Your grace, we lift our voice and make this solemn vow: As God lives, and is all I ever need, I will not waste my life . . .
JOHN PIPER
DON'T WASTE YOUR LIFE
