How To Waste Your Life Before 30 – Part 3
I am doing a small series that covers 8 ways of thinking that will result in a wasted life. Today I present to you 5 and 6. If you haven’t already, check out part 1 and part 2.
If you do not see dying as gain.
If you fear death, you will not see dying as gain. Death is a threat to the degree that it frustrates your main goals in life. Death is fearful to the degree that it threatens to rob you of what you treasure most. Death is a threat to the degree that it robs you of getting your Master’s degree, or finding true love, or becoming a millionaire by the time you’re 30, of maybe even being married by the time you’re 27. Paul treasured Christ and his goal was to magnify Christ. So he saw death not as a threat, not as a frustration, but as an occasion for him to achieve the ultimate in what it means to be intimate with Christ—to be in his presence (Philippians 1:21).
If you do not become infatuated with suffering.
In Luke 9:22-23 Jesus is telling his disciples they in a few days he will be rejected be the religious elite, killed and raised. Then in the very next verse he tells them that if they really want to be his disciples they will have to follow a similar pattern in their own lives by denying themselves (rejection) and taking up their cross (death). There can be no resurrection if there is no suffering (rejection and death). Suffering must precede resurrection. Before you or I can follow Christ we must first deny ourselves. There can be no real following without suffering (self-denial and cross-bearing). This is why we must be infatuated with suffering. If we hate suffering, we won’t do the things necessary to following Christ like taking risks to share our faith even when it means we may lose something as precious as life itself.
Robert
I love theology and the challenge of making deep teachings non-boring. Let's face it, most of the time we hear theological teaching, it really is boring. Does it really have to be that way? Nope.
