We (Christians) have as our ambition … to be pleasing to Him (2 Cor 5:9)
Life is brief
Moses says life is like a night’s sleep, David like a fading shadow, James like a vanishing vapor, and Peter like the withering grass. You are on a fast one-way street, never to pass this way again. In less than 100 years it will all be over; you will likely be long gone and scarcely remembered. The funeral home, the hearse, and the grave are at the end of the road. Are you spending your journey wisely? Are you on the right road? What is your life’s ambition? What is the real purpose of life?
Pleasures
You say your goal in life is pleasures, a good time, to get all the gusto you can, to eat all you can, drink all you can, shoot all the drugs you can, have all the sex you can, and laugh all you can. But look down the road a ways. Will your life’s ambition hold in the wheel chair? No, “burn out” is sure. You’ve spent your youth and energies. Your toes have curled, your teeth have rotted, your skin has wrinkled, and your lusts have withered like your body. What are left but a few fading memories whispering, “What was the use?” The tombstone will be your stop sign and the judgment of God will display all you have done in your body like an open closet door. God says, “It is appointed for men to die, and after this comes judgment”.
Possessions
You say your goal in life is possessions, to accumulate all you can. But I invite you to show me the house that hasn’t rotted, the car that hasn’t rusted, the clothes that haven’t worn out or haven’t been eaten by moths. Many are the elderly whose estates have been reduced to but a few sticks of furniture in a nursing home. Howard Hughes, who was one of the wealthiest, came to the end of his career holed up in a hotel room, collecting his urine, eating only ice cream, with fingernails like bird’s claws. What can mere things do for you when gaping for your last breath? The grave will even strip you of your precious wife and children.
Popularity
Is your goal is popularity, fame, reputation, and personal prominence? This boastful ugly show of self-life will see the curtains too. Again, take a tour of the cemetery (every town has one or more). Where are the successful? Truly, as someone said, “Death will always be the one signal failure of man.” And furthermore, in two or three generations your name will be lost forever from the faceless, forgotten multitudes who have gone before. And besides, to what purpose, ultimately, is your supposed “influence for good” on mankind, when mankind itself will soon wink out of existence. God will surely close the world history book and burn the “Who’s Who” at the return of the Lord Jesus Christ, to whom belongs the glory.
The One Valid Goal
Listen, there is only one valid goal in life – to live for God and love Him supremely. Isn’t He worthy of the glory? God made us for Himself and a life spent for Him and with Him is fulfillment at its best yielding righteousness, peace and joy unspeakable. Your plans, ambitions and wishes are but hollow idols; throw them in the trashcan. Take your splendid sins and cast them by faith on the mighty Savior, trusting that He died to pay your sin-debt – freely, fully, forgiven forever. Get a Bible. Saturate your mind with it and find it to be a manifesto of the mind of God, an operator’s manual for your soul, a blue print for building character, a rulebook for the race of life, a road map to heaven. Invest everything in God Himself. He alone has eternal life and those in union with Him through Jesus Christ will rise in the last day with a brand new body and live forever. Will you repent and believe, or will you press on and perish?
What does God say?
“All that is in the world,
– the lust of the flesh (pleasures)
– the lust of the eyes (possessions) and
– the boastful pride of life (popularity)
is not from the Father, but is from the world. And the world is passing away, and also its lusts but the one who does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:16, 17).
Make the will of God your career. Who are those who enter heaven at last? Those who do the will of God (Matthew 7:21).
