Don’t Waste Your Life

Don’t Waste Your Life

Excerpt from John Piper’s message at Passion OneDay Conference in 2000

You don’t have to know a lot of things for your life to make a huge difference for the Lord in the world. But you do need to know a few things that are great, and then be willing to live for them and die for them. The people that make a difference in the world are not the people who have mastered a lot of things, but who have been mastered by a very few things, that are very very great.

If you want your life to count, if you want the ripple effect of the pebbles you drop to become waves that reach the ends of the earth and roll on for centuries and into eternity, you don’t have to have a high IQ or a high EQ. You don’t have to be smart, you don’t have to have good looks or riches. You don’t have to come from a good family or a good school. You just have to know a few basic, simple, great, majestic, unchanging, obvious, glorious, eternal things, and be gripped by them, set on fire by them and be willing to lay down your life for them. 

Which is why anybody in this crowd can make a worldwide difference, because it isn’t you, it’s what you are gripped with. But one of the really sad things about this moment right now is that not everybody in this crowd wants their life to make a difference. There are hundreds of you — you don’t care whether you make a lasting difference for something great, you just want people to like you. If people would just like you, you’d be satisfied. If you could just finish school, get a good job, get a good wife or husband and a couple good kids and a nice house, a nice car and long weekends and a few good friends, good vacations, grow old healthy, a fun retirement, and quick and easy death and no hell — if you could have that, you’d be satisfied. That’s all you want, and you don’t give a rip whether your life counts on this earth for eternity.

That is a tragedy in the making. That is a tragedy in the making.

Three weeks ago, we got word at our church that Ruby Eliason and Laura Edwards were killed in Cameroon. Ruby was over eighty. Single all her life, a nurse, she poured her life out for one great thing: to make Jesus Christ known among the unreached, the poor, and the sick in the hardest and unreached places. Laura was a widow, a medical doctor in the Twin Cities, and then in retirement pushing eighty years old, and serving at Ruby’s side in Cameroon, going from village to village.

The brakes give way, over the cliff they go, and they’re gone — killed instantly, flying into eternity.

And I asked my people: was that a tragedy? Two lives, driven by one great vision, spent in unheralded service, devoted to one idea that Jesus Christ be magnified among the perishing poor and sick in the hardest places — two decades after almost all their American counterparts have retired to throw their lives away on trifles in Florida or New Mexico. No. That is not a tragedy. That is glory.

I will tell you what a tragedy is. I will show you how to waste your life. I’ll read to you from an article titled “Start Now Retire Early” in Reader’s Digest February 1998 what a tragedy is. “Bob and Penny took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Fla., where they cruise on their 30-foot trawler, play softball and collect shells.”

That’s a tragedy. That’s a tragedy. And people today are spending billions of dollars to persuade you to embrace that tragic dream. And I get forty minutes to plead with you: don’t buy it. With all my heart I plead with you: don’t buy that dream. The American Dream: a nice house, a nice car, a nice job, a nice family, a nice retirement, collecting shells as the last chapter before you stand before the Creator of the universe to give an account of what you did: “Here it is Lord — my shell collection! And I’ve got a nice swing, and look at my boat! God, look at my boat, God.”

Don’t waste your life; don’t waste it.

Only one life, twill soon be past,
Only what’s done for Christ will last.

Remember, only what’s done for Christ will stand the test of time. You have one life. Don’t waste it on comfortable, insignificant trifles. The American dream beckons us to spend our lives on trivial diversions, slipping through life caught up with seeking success, comfort, and pleasure above all else. But God designed us for far more than that. God created us to live and die boasting in the cross of Christ and making the glory of God known in all the spheres of life our singular passion. 

Don’t get caught up in a life that counts for nothing. Live for Christ! 

Don’t waste your life; don’t waste it.

Sources: https://www.desiringgod.org/messages/boasting-only-in-the-cross/excerpts/dont-waste-your-life; https://www.desiringgod.org/books/dont-waste-your-life; https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Waste-Your-Life-Piper/dp/1581344988