Living in Light of Eternity

“Though you have not seen him, you love him and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”            1 Peter 1:8-9

Sara Young in her book Jesus Lives says, “No matter what you suffer in this life your soul is absolutely secure!” 

And that is what is truly important.  It should drive our perspective and our core belief.  The soul of a Christian is secure in Christ but the opposite is true of those who don’t know him as Savior.

A few years ago, I heard a radio interview of a young man who had been a drug addict and through his addiction had contracted AIDS .  After getting AIDS he came to know Christ as his Savior.  The interviewer asked him if he ever questioned God about why he had allowed such a horrible thing to happen to him.  The young man replied, “Yeah, I ask God why all the time.  Why out of all the people in the world you chose me!  Because now I’m going to spend eternity with You!”

What the young man was saying is this life is short (and even shorter for him now that he had gotten AIDS) but eternity was forever and he was going to spend it with the God who had saved his soul!

What an amazing perspective.  The world looks at this young man and grieves that he was so young and he had such a short time to live.  But we as believers KNOW that now he is really living, living in the presence of the one who gave His life to redeem him!

Are you willing to say, “God, you do whatever it takes in this “inch” of time, so that ______________ (you fill in the blank) will be in eternity with you?”

Because that’s what it means to live in light of eternity.  Are you willing to pray that for your children? 

I was willing to pray that until it really happened to me.   I was living in a world of fear because my teenage son was going his own way and living a pretty destructive lifestyle.  Crying out to God, I said “Lord, he could do something terrible and spend the rest of his life in jail!”  And the Lord said, “And so what if he does and He comes back to me and his soul is saved?  Wouldn’t it be worth it?  Isn’t that what’s really important?”

Living in light of eternity isn’t always easy BUT it does set us free!  Living in light of eternity causes us to focus on what is truly important – not the furniture we own, the clothes we wear, the places we travel or that the Green Bay Packers are going to the Super Bowl – plain and simple – it’s the salvation of our souls and those around us!

So remember . . .

“Though you have not seen him, you love him and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”     1 Peter 1:8-9