Whatever you do…..

I ponder long, racking my brain for what words I might pen to a one-line statement.

How do I summarize a life? 

We spend our lives with words – speaking who we are out loud to others, but also the conversations in the deep inner parts.  Those words that bring worry or regret, rejoicing or peace.  We turn words over, repeating them.  They have the power to encite, to stirr up anger and wrath or to calm – a peaceful hymn murmered when things are turning sour and you just have to hold. on. to Him.

But these words I search for must be different – not words of conversation, that sometime lose their meaning.  They must define, sharpen and prod.

John Piper writes, “But whatever you do, find the God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated passion of your life, and find your way to say it and live for it and die for it.”  

I want that.  I want to define what is in my heart – this quest to share His story, the grace-dripping blood He shed for you and for me, this deep desire that my life count for something great.  And it isn’t legalism to want to accomplish something for Christ, it is being a disciple – a student of Christ, whose life was used for something great.  He didn’t come to show us how to live a perfect life!  He didn’t come to help us have a nice family in a quiet neighborhood that others can look at from the outside and say, “wow, what a nice family, I need to get whatever they have.” It may be a comfortable response to say that we lead others to Christ by the way we live – and then go live lives just like the rest of the world (minus the blatanly sinful stuff of course – insert sarcasm here), but it isn’t the gospel.

We are called to lay down our lives for others.  To live this mess with them.  We abandon all of the expectations of the world and walk after Him, with Him leading the way. We awaken each morning ready to answer His call, and with gratitude, accept each moment as a gift of His grace, used for His eternal glory.  And there we find our eternal significance.

So I turn words over in my mind and pictures flash in my head and I try to find a way to shape the call in my heart into a solitary sentence.  A sentence which adds clarity and objective so that in the end I may say like the God-man on the cross……. “It is finished”.

What is your God-centered, Christ-exalting, Bible-saturated passion?