Serving God's Purpose

Later this year I will be 50 years old, and I'm not sure I like the way that sounds. Half a century. Five decades. Halfway to a hundred. Twice the age of the guys I used to idolize who play in the NFL, the NBA, and Major League Baseball.

I shouldn't complain, though. Every moment of life is precious, and I'm grateful for every breath God has given me.

They Didn't Live Long Enough

A precocious child, Frances R. Havergal was already reading the Bible at age four and in time became proficient in eight languages. When Frances was only 21 she wrote the famous hymn, "I Gave My Life for Thee." She later composed the lyrics for "Take My Life and Let It Be"—including the line that says, "Take my silver and my gold, Not a mite would I withhold"—which she literally applied by packing up all her jewelry and giving it to support world missions. Frances R. Havergal died at the age of 42. How many more hymns might she have written if she had lived another 40 years?

Francis of Assisi died at 47. The philosopher Thomas Aquinas died at 49 and Pascal at 39. Bible translator William Tyndale was strangled and burned at the stake at age 46. The pioneer missionary David Brainerd died of tuberculosis at 29. Charles Spurgeon preached to thousands and trained hundreds of ministers, but he suffered from gout and depression, and died before reaching his 60th birthday.

Christian church preacher James A. Garfield was elected President of the United States, but served less than a year before he was assassinated at the age of 49. Knowles Shaw, the preacher and songwriter who composed "Bringing in the Sheaves," died in a train wreck when he was 43.

In 1899, Dwight L. Moody died at the relatively young age of 62 after preaching to as many as 70,000 people per week without the aid of radio, television, or even a sophisticated microphone to amplify his voice. How many more would have heard him preach if he had lived a hundred years later with modern technology at his disposal?

Every moment of life is precious.

In 1917, Oswald Chambers died from complications of appendicitis at the age of 43. During his ministry, his wife had taken voluminous notes of his Bible lectures and she turned them into the famous devotional volume, My Utmost for His Highest. We can only wonder what other resources Oswald Chambers would have produced if he had lived twice as long.

Making the Most of It

Life's brevity shouldn't surprise us. The Bible says our lives are "a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes" (James 4:14). How long a lifetime is long enough? Moses lived to be 120, yet he sighed that our days "quickly pass, and we fly away." In Psalm 90 (subtitled "a prayer of Moses the man of God") he laid down a general rule about the average lifetime that remains true to this day. He said, "The length of our days is seventy years—or eighty if we have the strength" (v. 10). How can we "number our days aright" (v. 12)?

Some of us can start early and devote our lives to the Lord from childhood. "Remember your Creator in the days of your youth" (Ecclesiastes 12:1). All of us can stay focused and "make the most of every opportunity" (Colossians 4:5). We can stay fruitful, so that every season of life produces maximum fruit for the Lord. "This is to my Father's glory," Jesus said, "that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples" (John 15:8). And we can stay faithful, agreeing with the apostle Paul who faced death saying, "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith" (2 Timothy 4:7).

David learned to love God when he was a young boy. His adulthood brought great victories and painful failures. Finally, "when David had served God's purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep died" (Acts 13:36). However many years I'm granted, I want to make the most of every opportunity. I want to serve God's purpose in my generation before I die.