don't waste your life

For me as a boy, one of the most gripping illustrations my fiery father used was the story of a man converted in old age. The church had prayed for this man for decades. He was hard and resistant. But this time, for some reason, he showed up when my father was preaching. At the end of the service, during a hymn, to everyone's amazement he came and took my father's hand. They sat down together on the front pew of the church as the people were dismissed. God opened his heart to the Gospel of Christ, and he was saved from his sins and given eternal life. But that did not stop him from sobbing and saying, as the tears ran down his wrinkled face - and what an impact it made on me to hear my father say this through his own tears - "I've wasted it! I've wasted it!"

This was the story that gripped me more than all the stories of young people who died in car wrecks before they were converted - the story of an old man weeping that he had wasted his life. In those early years God awakened in me a fear and a passion not to waste my life. The thought of coming to my old age and saying through tears, "I've wasted it! I've wasted it!" was a fearful and horrible thought to me.

- John Piper, Don't Waste Your Life

as i approach my 23rd birthday, my biggest regret is not becoming a Christian earlier in my life. although i can't point to the exact moment when i became a Christian, i don't think i became a Christian until i was nearly 20 (sometime before i got baptised in apr 06). looking back, it feels like i've wasted the first 20 years of my life.

at the same time, i thank God that regardless of my regret, this particular world is the best possible world (from His perspective and in His free knowledge), and that despite my best efforts to waste the first 20 years of my life, 'there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death' (Romans 8:1-2, NIV).

i don't know why the past has turned out the way it has. i don't know why the present is the way it is. i don't even know what the future holds. but going mysteriously forward, i know that 'in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose' (Romans 8:28, NIV).

*****

"The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us." - Acts 17:24-27 (NIV)

"Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near." - Isaiah 55:6 (NIV)

"As God's fellow workers we urge you not to receive God's grace in vain. For he says, "In the time of my favour I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you." I tell you, now is the time of God's favour, now is the day of salvation." - 2 Corinthians 6:1-2 (NIV)

Time is very precious, because when it is past, it cannot be recovered. There are many things which men possess, which if they part with, they can obtain them again. If a man have parted with something which he had, not knowing the worth of it, or the need he should have of it; he often can regain it, at least with pains and cost. If a man have been overseen in a bargain, and have bartered away or sold something, and afterwards repents of it, he may often obtain a release, and recover what he had parted with.

But it is not so with respect to time. When once that is gone, it is gone forever; no pains, no cost will recover it. Though we repent ever so much that we let it pass, and did not improve it while we had it, it will be to no purpose. Every part of it is successively offered to us, that we may choose whether we will make it our own, or not. But there is no delay. It will not wait upon us to see whether or not we will comply with the offer. But if we refuse, it is immediately taken away, and never offered more. As to that part of time which is gone, however we have neglected to improve it, it is out of our possession and out of our reach.

- Jonathan Edwards, The Preciousness of Time and the Importance of Redeeming It