People ask me every day why I am giving up my job and the comforts I have here for a year to travel to the most un-reached people in the world and live out of a backpack, sleep on dirt floors & shower with baby wipes (out of a bucket if we are lucky). My answer to them is that our time here on Earth is so limited compared to the eternity we will spend in Heaven. Why would I spend all my time here trying to enjoy life and make life as comfortable as I can when Paul says in the Bible that the way we live our short time here determines how we will spend our eternity in Heaven? I am not saying that God doesn’t want us to enjoy our time here, because he certainly does. He wouldn’t have created this place and created us if He didn’t. We just need to be aware of His calling in our lives and make sure the way we are living reflects that calling. Not everyone is called to do what I am doing. One thing I do know is that we are all called to something and we are all called to live radically for the sake of the Gospel.
There are billions of people around the world who don’t know Jesus and are desperate to feel this Love. God has given us the responsibility of carrying their eternity in our hands.That is not a light assignment. Don’t let the enemy tell you that you have to go to the places I am to accomplish this. There are people all over your current cities, in your offices, and in the lines of the grocery store you shop at every day who need Jesus.
We get one chance at this life on Earth and it could end at any second for any of us. We should live our lives like a runner looking at that moment when we face God, because when that moment comes, we don’t get this chance over again.
Paul sums it up perfectly in his letter to the Philippians- Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus
