Life is short so live well!
JAMES 4:13-17 – 13 Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” 14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15 Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogant schemes. All such boasting is evil. 17 If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.
1. LIFE IS A VAPOR
- A. Life is frail
- v13-14a – 13 Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” 14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow.
- B. Life is Short
- PSALM 90:10 – Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures; yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.LIFE IS SHORT SO LIVE WELL!
- Too short to waste time.Too short to hate.Too short to live with regret.Too short to give up.Too short to give in.Too short to accept defeat.Too short to send in pursuing things that don’t last.Too short to resist reject, or obstruct the God-given destiny that you have been given.
- YOUR LIFE ON THIS EARTH IS SHORT, BUT YOUR LIFE IN CHRIST IS ETERNAL!
- God designed you with a purpose. God commissioned you specifically to bring value into this world.
- God planned you individually to make a difference right where you are, when you are, and how you are because of who you are and what you are!
- PSALM 90:10 – Our days may come to seventy years, or eighty, if our strength endures; yet the best of them are but trouble and sorrow, for they quickly pass, and we fly away.LIFE IS SHORT SO LIVE WELL!
- C. Death is Certain!
- LUKE 13:2-5 – 2 Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? 3 I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. 4 Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? 5 I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”1 CORINTHIANS 15:32B – If I fought wild beasts in Ephesus with no more than human hopes, what have I gained? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink,OUR LIVES BELONG TO GOD!
- JOB 1:20-21 – ‘The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord’” 1 SAMUEL 2:6 – “The Lord kills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and raises up”“Our lives belong to God, and he has the right to take us any time he chooses.”DON’T WASTE IT!
- LUKE 12:16–21 – The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, “What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?” And he said, “I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” But God said to him, “Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.
- LUKE 13:2-5 – 2 Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? 3 I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. 4 Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? 5 I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”1 CORINTHIANS 15:32B – If I fought wild beasts in Ephesus with no more than human hopes, what have I gained? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink,OUR LIVES BELONG TO GOD!
2. GOD IS SOVEREIGN!
- JAMES 4:15 – Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.”
- “We display the supreme worth of Jesus in our lives is by treasuring Christ above all things.”
3. PRIDE IS A GREAT SIN THAT EASILY PLAGUES US ALL
- V. 13 – “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.”
- 1 CORINTHIANS 4:7 – 7 For who makes you different from anyone else? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?
- Everything we have comes from God by His grace. We fall into pride when we do not keep that in mind!
- How then should we live in view of the fact that life is a vapor, that God is sovereign, and that we’re so prone to pride?
4. HUMBLE OBEDIENCE TO GOD’S REVEALED WILL
- V. 17 – 17 If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.
- Life is hard. You will face challenges and obstacles, hard times and opposition.
- The enemy will seek to stop you in your tracks and turn you back from discovering everything that God is offering you.
- God wants you to realize that the Spirit of the Lord is upon you, because God has anointed you to bring Good news to the poor.
- God has sent you to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free, and that the time of God’s favor has come.
This is the truth!
This is the fact!
This is reality
You can deny it!
You can reject it!
You can ignore it!
BUT YOU CAN’T CHANGE IT!
YOU WERE BORN ON PURPOSE FOR A PURPOSE AND YOU HAVE A MISSION AND CALLING THAT NO OTHER PERSON LIVING NOW CAN ACCOMPLISH!!
LIFE IS SHORT…DON’T WAIT ANY LONGER!!
