Making Your Life Count (Part 2): What You Do With Your Life Matters a Lot

This is the second in a series of writings on how to discover God’s mission for your life.  In the first post of the series, we focused on Ephesians 2:10, which had two important points for us.  First, that we are God’s masterpiece, so we need to value ourselves as such — and value others, as well. Second is that God prepared works for you to do.  Together, we concluded that you were made on purpose and with a purpose. In this post, we examine another passage in Ephesians which challenges us to be alert and not to waste opportunities.

Ephesians 5:15-17 says “Be very careful, then, how you live — not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is” (NIV).

The main point is that what you do with your life matters a lot.  You can make unwise choices, potentially wasting the impact that your life could have, or you can make wise choices, allowing your life to have the kind of impact that God intended for it to have.  If you want to make a wise choice, you need to understand what the Lord’s will is.  How do we do that?

First, I would like to suggest that the Bible, particularly the New Testament, provides a solid foundation for understanding the Lord’s will.  [See, for example, 2 Timothy 3:16-17].  As you read the Bible, especially the New Testament, you begin to understand more of God’s character and desires.  Understanding these things go a long way to understanding what the Lord’s will is.

But in day-to-day and moment-by-moment questions, we need more than just a written Word.  We need God Himself to lead us and guide us. Fortunately, God has given us Holy Spirit to live inside us. Jesus calls the Holy Spirit the Comforter and Counselor, and He will teach us all things, according to John 14:26. So we have to learn to listen for Holy Spirit’s guidance, which for most of us takes quite some time to learn to do. Here is an article I wrote on how to learn to hear God’s voice: How to Hear God’s Voice.

When we read the phrase “making the most of every opportunity”, it might mean that there is a “spur of the moment” opportunity to be seized, and it might also mean that there is some strategic and tactical thinking to be done. Chances are pretty good that some are scared by the spontaneous thing — especially us shy people who like to appear respectable and dare I say “in control” — and some are scared by the thoughtful, planned out approach — especially those of us who have trouble with commitment and staying focused.  But all of us need to be open to both.

One of my biggest regrets as a Christian was my false belief that I had when I was younger about God only speaking in the moment, and not in longer-term planning. The reason it is a regret is that I suspect that my life and service to God might be much better focused at this stage of my life, and I might have borne much more fruit by now, if I had sought God more about the “good works that he prepared in advance for me to do” and if I had sought God to better “understand what his will” for me is, so that I could make the most of every opportunity. However, it is not profitable to dwell too much on the past, which we cannot change, but rather on the future, which we can still change.

I have read recently a number of articles and books on creating a vision statement and mission statement for your life, your marriage, your family, your church, and your business. There are indeed some useful comments out there on how and why to do these statements. But let us remember that we are trying to understand what the Lord’s will is, which may be contrary to what the secular and even Christian writings suggest. It is one thing to try to learn how to do something and to collect all wisdom one can to do it, BUT remember, the Lord is indeed the Lord, and He has a will and mind of His own that seems to me often deviates from the prescribed general wisdom.

And yet I need to tell you that it may turn out that God doesn’t want to tell you what His vision is for your life, at least not now.  Perhaps you aren’t ready to know.  Perhaps it would make you too proud knowing the answer.  Or that it would scare you so bad you would run.  Or perhaps God’s concept is so foreign to what you can understand right now that it would make no sense.
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Nevertheless, praying that God will help you see his vision and mission for your life is a good thing to do, because it may put into action God’s eventual answer to your prayer (remember that Jesus said in Luke 11:9, “Seek and keep on seeking and you will find”); and, it may help you to learn things while you are cooperating with God in this envisioning phase.  What I mean by that is that since God is the Creator, and we are made in his image, we are also meant to be creative, which includes conceptualizing — dreaming and planning.

Don’t give up! God would not have told us through this passage of Ephesians to make the most of every opportunity if He didn’t intend to provide for us a way to do so!

Discussion Questions

1) Are you better at strategic planning or being spontaneous?

2) Can you think of examples where God has had you strategic plan something for the Kingdom’s sake? How about being spontaneous for the Kingdom’s sake?

Part 1 of the series: Hand-crafted for Specific Works.

This is part of an earlier message had all the parts posted on this website, but which was very long.  That message came out of a sermon given at Harvest Church in Hampstead, Maryland, USA, in April 2012.