In the Light of Eternity

"It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah."
-Ephesians 2:2-6 (The Message)

It's not often that I refer to the Message interpretation of the Bible but in this case I love this interpretation. In particular I love the line: You let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. It's a powerful truth.

This makes me wonder... Why do we settle for less? We seem to have this idea that God doesn't know what's best for  us. Didn't He make us? Didn't He make our desires? If you believe this than it makes sense to believe that He knows what's best for us. So why don't we believe this? Probably because of our sinful nature and also because we get instant happiness from the things of the world. Sure, heaven is going to be great, but heaven isn't here right now... so why not have fun here, right? Wrong.

I wrote something powerful on my quote board this weekend after attending an awesome speaking session of how to find God's will for our lives. I wrote: "When we see things in light of eternity, we start seeing things with a different perspective."

We aren't meant to live here. We are meant to be creatures of heaven. We are aliens here. If that is the case, why are we so easily satisfied?

We need to start looking at our lives in light of eternity. Eternity doesn't start when we get to heaven, it starts now and it's affected by the decisions that we make now. So stop letting the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, affect your perspective. If we have heaven and a relationship with God as our goal then we need to start letting that affect our outlook on life.

Don't settle. God embraced us with incredible amounts of love that we don't deserve and He made us alive with Christ. Why don't we make the most of this new life?