For His Use and His Glory

When I look back on my life these many years, I weep at all the waste, the failures, the dry times of living, more for the world than living in the world more for God. I look at all the wood, hay, and stubble. From all the years I was an unconverted church member who rested upon a false foundation of a good opinion of myself and a long track record of service.

But God, in His mercy, reached down and got me lost by bringing me under Holy Spirit conviction, so I could come to Christ and be saved. A person's life, lived for God, is all that matters in light of Eternity. When we are dead and stand at the judgment and the books are opened and our life is reviewed, it's not going to matter a hill of beans what kind of car we drove or how much money we made and left behind.

Like the old poem by C. T. Studd says, Only one life, which will soon be past. Only what's done for Christ will last. And it's true, friends.

How much time God gave us that was squandered on television and wasted on sports and entertaining ourselves would be measured alongside the time we spent on our knees and in our Bibles. How much money we hoarded for ourselves and family, while ministry suffered want and the gospel couldn't run across the globe as it could have, had funds been there to spread God's Word, would be a great deficit in our account in Eternity. At the Bema seat, most of us will shrink at how we blocked God here and checked Him there, as missed opportunities to serve Him vanish like passing mists, never to return again.

How many blessings did we miss out on will shame us and shrink us at the lack? How many lost opportunities did we have of sharing the gospel with the lost? I can see a man's face right now as it hovers in my memory. He was a construction worker who was doing work on my deceased mother's house before I sold it. He was one of a three-man crew, and, oddly enough, he was always the first one there and the last one to leave, and consequently I had many opportunities to speak to him and pass the time, but I never shared the gospel with him.

A week after the work was done on that home I was reading the newspaper in the obituary section and there his face greeted me—or should I say haunted me. He died in his early thirties quite suddenly. His blood will be on my hands at the judgment for my great and grievous failure to speak to him about my Christ.

What excuses will we give to our Lord for not witnessing for Him to a dying world? I like studying Bible characters and reading about them over and over again in my Bible. Some light was shed on the life of Moses to me recently. In Exodus chapter 2 and in verses 1 through 15 we see the first forty years of Moses' life in Egypt, and in the next verses 15 through 25 we see the next forty years of Moses' life in the Midian desert tending sheep, and I made the following discovery in the life of Moses and it speaks volumes to me.

The first forty years of Moses' life in Egypt is covered by only fifteen verses of Scripture. The next forty years of Moses' life on the backside of the Midian desert is covered by only ten verses of Scripture. Moses lived to be a hundred and twenty years old.

But the record of Moses' life after he encountered God and lived for Him the last forty years of his life is covered by approximately 4,252 verses of Scripture. Surely this clearly demonstrates that the significance of a life begins after that person has given themselves entirely to God for His use and His glory. Let's chew on that for a while as we go to a time of prayer.

Let us pray.