Living Intentionally

Living Intentionally

As we are entering into a new year, I thought it would be beneficial to look at how we as Christians are to live our lives in this crazy mixed up world. So far we’ve looked at in-between and meanwhile living. Today, I’d like to look at intentional living, which is about our need to reassess life, and to live our lives intentionally given the fact we only have so many days to live upon this earth.

This reality is what drove King David to live intentionally when he realized that the end of his life was only a single breath away.

He begins by saying, “Show me, O Lord, my life's end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life.” (Psalm 39:4 NIV)

As we begin the process of reassessing our lives, what we’ll find is that those things we considered to be important might not be that important after all. To reassess our life, therefore, we need to ask, “Are we doing what is most important?”

Why wait for our days to be numbered by someone or something else before we start doing what we should have been doing all along. It’s about getting our lives rightly focused, because in this life we only go around once.

Life is not cyclical but lineal. There are no mulligans or do-overs once this life ends. Once it’s done, it’s done. Once this life is over, either heaven or hell are in our future.

The Bible says, “It is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment” (Hebrews 9:27 NKJV).

We could think of it this way; that at this very moment we’re going 66,000 miles an hour. That’s how fast this world is spinning on its axis. How fast is 66,000 mph? In terms that we can relate to, it’s faster than the spin cycle on a washing machine.

Here then is our dilemma, what if we had only a couple of spins left; how would we live our lives, and what would we live our lives for? Would we make them count, or waste them away?

King David understood how fleeting life really is, which prompted him to ask the Lord how many spins he had left, and then how was he to live his life given that knowledge.

David continued saying, “My life is no longer than the width of my hand. An entire lifetime is just a moment to you; human existence is but a breath.” (Psalm 39:5 NLT)

The Apostle James said that life is here one moment and gone the next, that it’s like a puff of vaporized water. Poof, and its gone!

James said, “You do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.” (James 4:14 NKJV)

Going back to David, to understand his thought process and why he is asking this of God, is to understand that early on he lived under a death sentence. King Saul literally put out a hit on David’s life, and as a result David lived his life on the lamb, dodging spears along the way that were thrown in his direction.

All David knew is that God promised him a kingdom, and that Saul wanted him dead before that kingdom could be realized. Therefore, David asked God to help him know how to live his life under a death sentence.

Knowing that our days are numbered, and that our lives are likewise under a death sentence, we really should begin to reassess our lives, and change how we live them, that is, living them for God’s glory; instead of living our lives the way we want.

Instead of waiting until we hear the words, “You only have a week, a month, or a year left to live,” we should be seizing the day, seizing the time we have left for what is truly important.

Psalm 90 is a prayer believed to be written by Moses. It says that life is like a whisper, or a sigh, and then it says that the average person will only live 70 to 80 years. With this knowledge then Moses asks God to tell him how to live life accordingly.

The Psalm was probably written close to the end of Moses’ life, which was toward the end of their wilderness wandering, which means that Moses would have witness and presided over all who died in the wilderness, and we’re talking about a whole lot of people, that is, the whole adult population of Israel who rebelled against God when He first told them to cross the Jordan River.

Recognizing then the brevity of life, Moses ask God to give them the wisdom to know how to live their lives knowing that someday they were all going to die.