Don’t Waste Your Life

            “So,
whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” 1
CORINTHIANS 10:31  This is a verse
that runs through the minds of many believers of Christ.  We hear versions of it in sermons,
songs, and discussions.  Is this a
verse that we actually follow?  In
everything we do, do we bring glory to God?  EVERYTHING.  I
don’t think we have to go into the definition of that word.  It’s rather large. 

            As
a team we have been reading “Don’t Waste Your Life” written by John Piper.  John Piper emphasizes how everything we
do should bring glory to God.  In
all that we do we should be bringing glory to God.  As human beings it is almost impossible for us to always
follow God in all that we do, and the reason is that we are selfish.  Our nature tells us that we deserve to
have a nice house, a big family, money, a comfortable life, a fashionable car,
etc., basically “the American Dream”. 
A lot of our struggle to completely follow the Lord comes from our
desire to be liked or wanted by people. 
I like how Piper puts it in his book, “You may not be sure that you want
your life to make a difference. Maybe you don’t care very much whether you make
a lasting difference for the sake of something great. You just want people to
like you. If people would just like being around you, you’d be satisfied. Or if
you could just have a good job with a good wife, or husband, and a couple of
good kids and a nice car and long weekends and a few good friends, a fun
retirement, and a quick and easy death, and no hell-if you could have all that
(even without God)-you would be satisfied. That is a tragedy in the making. A
wasted life.”  I don’t want to
waste my life and I want to glorify God in all that I do.  But I know that each day I have to wake
up and remind of self of what Jesus did for me by dying on the cross for my
sins, and I have to remember that God placed me on this earth for one
purpose.  That purpose is to bring
glory to Him!  In Psalm 19 David
wrote, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his
handiwork”.  God has created this
earth to remind me how amazing he is. 
He has created the smallest snails in the ocean to the galaxies.  Each day I look out the window, which
gives me no excuse to not be reminded of how magnificent he is, and he deserves
all the glory.

            On
Monday part of our group went to a men’s prison about ten minutes from our
house.  Upon entering the doors we
were a little shaky, uncertain of what we were about to encounter.  Our friend Cathy Vimpany from Britain
brought us there.  Cathy is a bold
lady of about 70, and she loves the Lord with all her heart.  Cathy has been ministering to these men
for the past 15 years, and she wants to make sure they all have a chance to
know the Lord.  As the eight of us
trailed Cathy through the corridors of the prison, we felt nervous.  They brought us to a stone courtyard
full of men in orange jump suits. 
All we brought with us was a guitar.  Sara brought it out and we began to sing.  I felt as though we were a traveling
choir worshipping the Lord, but it worked.  The men gathered and were excited to worship with us.  Cathy is well known amongst theses men
and they respect her to the highest degree.  The group kept growing and the dancing began.  Here we were a bunch of Americans singing
songs to God with a bunch of men in an African prison.  It was one of the most powerful
experiences I have ever had.  Tears
came to my eyes as the songs came out. 
These men need and want God. 
Their lives in the past were wasted and they don’t want to waste the
future.  Cathy shared the Word of
God and prayed for the men.  We all
moved again as a group and did the same thing two more times.  It was powerful.  I have been so blessed with the life
that I have been given.  It would
be tragedy to not constantly share God’s love with people.  They deserve to know how much he loves
them, just like these men in the prison deserved it.

            I
want to leave you with a story that I shared with my team on Monday.  As I read it to them it brought tears
to my eyes.  This is the story of a
man names Joseph who used to be a vicious warrior.  But God had something else in store for him.  After you read it I want you to ask
yourself if you are willing to do what he did?

 

One
day, Joseph, who was walking along one of these hot, dirty African roads, met
someone who shared the gospel of Jesus Christ with him. Then and there he
accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior. The power of the Spirit began
transforming his life; he was filled with such excitement and joy that the
first thing he wanted to do was return to his own village and share the same
Good News with the members of his local tribe.  Joseph began going from door-to-door, telling everyone he
met about the Cross of Jesus and the salvation it offered, expecting to see
their faces light up the way his had. To his amazement the villagers not only
didn’t care, they became violent. The men of the village seized him and held
him to the ground while the women beat him with strands of barbed wire. He was
dragged from the village and left to die alone in the bush.  Joseph somehow managed to crawl to a
waterhole, and there, after days of passing in and out of consciousness, found
the strength to get up. He wondered about the hostile reception he had received
from people he had known all his life. He decided he must have left something
out or told the story of Jesus incorrectly. After rehearsing the message he had
first heard, he decided to go back and share his faith once more.  Joseph limped into the circle of huts
and began to

proclaim
Jesus. “He died for you, so that you might find forgiveness and come to know
the living God,” he pleaded. Again he was grabbed by the men of the village and
held while the women beat him, reopening wounds that had just begun to heal.
Once more they dragged him unconscious from the village and left him to die.To
have survived the first beating was truly remarkable. To live through the
second was a miracle. Again, days later, Joseph awoke in the wilderness,
bruised, scarred-and determined to go back.  He returned to the small village and this time, they
attacked him before he had a chance to open his mouth.

As
they flogged him for the third and probably the last time, he again spoke to
them of Jesus Christ, the Lord. 
Before he passed out, the last thing he saw was that the women who were
beating him began to weep.  This
time he awoke in his own bed. The ones who had so severely beaten him were now
trying to save his

life
and nurse him back to health. The entire village had come to Christ.