In my last article I shared my belief that the first purpose of life is to discover that God loves you, love him back, pass it around, and go home. For many that wasn’t shocking.
Now I’d like to propose the other purpose of life, which is about something you may not have ever considered.
Most people everywhere spend most of their time in the here and now. Juggling family and work. Paying the bills. What’s for supper? All those are important.
Yet we also use our time to prepare for the future. Planting a tree. Getting training or an education to better support ourselves. Sending aside money for retirement.
Let’s take that a step further.
Our experiences in this life prepare us for even more service to God beyond this life.
I’m not going to review all the life experiences you and I have faced, because I don’t need to. You know your own story. Challenges. Struggles. Achievements. Stressors. Disappointments. Setbacks. Victories. Defeats. We go from one to the next. It never seems to stop. But when we show our willingness and determination to keep on keeping on, God will use us for even greater things.
Know that the Lord will be beside you throughout your trek. On your own you might be toast. With his help you’re going to be okay. And where does all this lead?
Jesus taught us… “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches?” [Luke 16:10-11, NIV]
1. We need to do our best to be faithful with this one short lifetime if we want God to give us a forever life with him in Heaven. 2. I am confident that the better we face the opportunities and challenges of this life will impact what God has planned for us on the other side.
When my dad passed, I posted on Facebook: “Life is school. Death is graduation. Do you have a job lined up?”
Forget all those silly cartoons about believers in Heaven sitting on a cloud in a white robe, wings, halo, harp. Pure fiction. Angelic beings have jobs. Human beings will have jobs. I’m not sure what those jobs will be but I am very very curious.
The first purpose of life is to discover that God loves you, love him back, pass it around, and go home. The other purpose of life is to use this one short life to prepare for the next, which lasts forever.
We do our duty to God, with his help, to the absolute best of our ability. We can show him that we do love him with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength from now until the end of time and beyond.
There’s value in all our life experiences, both pleasant and awful. How that exactly prepares us for future service cannot be known. I doubt God would have us live this one life, with all its ups and downs, merely to park us on a cloud.
Some see the next life as an opportunity to bask in the glory of God and give him praise forever. Sure. But I have a feeling it will be much more than that.
I’ve mentioned before that the most mysterious verse in all of Scripture is 1 John 3:2: “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” [NIV]
Humm. I wonder.
How you live your life here is an investment in your forever.
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Dave Soucie lives, serves and writes in Indianapolis.
Copyright © 2024 by Dave Soucie. All rights reserved [but permission is granted for non-commercial use only, with proper citation and by informing the author].
Dave Soucie 
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