The purpose driven life

Made to Last forever

God has planted eternity in the human heart. Ecclesiastes 3:11 (NLT)

God as designed you in his image, to live for eternity. Even though we know everyone eventually dies, death always seems unfair or unnatural. The reason we feel we should live forever is that God wired our brains with desire.

  One day our heart will stop beating. That will be the end of your body and your time on Earth, but it will not be the end of you. Your earthly body is just temporary residence for your spirit. The Bible calls your earthly body a "tent", refers to your future body as a "house".

While your life on earth offers many choices, eternity only two: heaven or hell. Your relationship to God on earth will determine your relationship to him in eternity. If you learn to love and trust God's son, Jesus, you will be invited to spend the rest of eternity with him. On the other hand, if you reject his love, forgiveness, and salvation, you will spend eternity apart from God forever.

When you realize that life is just a preparation for eternity, you will begin to live differently. You will start living in light of eternity, and that will color how you handle every relationship, task, and circumstance. Suddenly many activities, goals and even problems that seemed so important will appear trivial, petty, and unworthy of your attention. The closer you live to God, the smaller everything else appears.

If your time on Earth were all there is to your life, I would suggest you living it up immediately. You could forget being good and ethical, and you wouldn't have to worry about any consequences of your actions. You could indulge yourself in total self-centeredness because your actions would no long-term repercussions. But-and this makes all the difference- death is not the end of you! Death is not your termination, but your transition into eternity, so there are eternal consequences to everything you do on Earth. Every act of your life strikes some chord that will vibrate in eternity.

  The most damaging aspect of contemporary living is short-term thinking. To make the most of your life, you must keep the vision of eternity continually in your mind and the value of it in your heart. There's far more to life than just here and now. Today is visible tip of the iceberg. Eternity is all the rest you don't see underneath the surface. What is it going to be like in eternity with God? Frankly, the capacity of our brains cannot handle the wonder and greatness of heaven. It would be like trying to describe the Internet to an ant. It's futile. Words have not been invented that could possibly convey the experience of eternity. The Bible says," No mere man has ever seen, heard, or even imagined what wonderful things God has ready for those who love the lord." However, God has given us glimpses of eternity in his word. We know right now God is preparing an eternal home for us. In Heaven, we will be reunited with loved ones who are believers, released from all the pain and suffering, rewarded for our faithfulness on earth, and reassigned to do work. We will enjoy unbroken fellowship with God.

  The only time people think about eternity is at funerals, and then it's often shallow, sentimental thinking, based on ignorance. You may feel it's morbid to think about death, but actually it's unhealthy to live in denial of death and not consider what is inevitable. Only a fool would go through life unprepared for what we all know will eventually happen. You need to think about eternity, not less.

  Measured against eternity, our time on earth is just a blink of an eye, but the consequences will last forever. The deeds of this life are the destiny of the next. We should be "realizing that every moment we spend in these earthly bodies is the time spent away from our eternal home in heaven with Jesus." Years ago a popular slogan encouraged many people to live each day "the first day of the rest of your life." Actually, it would be wiser to live each day as if it would be your last day of your life.