One Life To Live

One Life to Live

Brian A. Moon

In an average lifetime, the average American spends 3 years in business meetings, 13 years watching TV, Spends $89,281 on food, consumes 109,354 pounds of food, Makes 1811 trips to McDonalds, Spends $6881 in vending machines, Eats 35,138 cookies and 1483 pounds of candy, Catches 304 colds, Is involved in 6 motor vehicle accidents, is hospitalized 8 times (men) or 12 times (women), Spends 24 years sleeping.

Another breakdown of the average life of 70 years goes something like this:

Sleep................23 years...........32.9%

Work.................16 years...........22.8%

TV....................8 years...........11.4%

Eating................6 years............8.6%

Travel................6 years............8.6%

Leisure.............4.5 years............6.5%

Illness...............4 years............5.7%

Dressing..............2 years............2.8%

Religion............0.5 years............0.7%

Total................70 years............100%

So what is life all about? Is life just spending time doing things like eating for 6 years, or dressing yourself for 2 years? If we only have “One Life to Live” is this list what our lives will look like when all is said and done? Someone once told me that the tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it. That is my theme for you tonight, start living life because we do only have “One Life to Live!” Have you ever scene the bumper sticker that says, “Life is too precious to waste?” Life is a gift that has been given to each of us in this room tonight and my challenge to you is to make the most of it! So how do we do that? How do we make the most out of the 60, 70, or 80 years that most of us will live? Well, it begins by asking the right questions and I would like to offer us three tonight that will get the ball rolling so to speak.

The first is:

What does God want from me?

Since God is the one who gave us this gift of life, then he is really the only one who can answer what is expected of me during my life.

The Bible says, “Look carefully then how you walk! Live purposefully and worthily and accurately, not as the unwise and witless, but as wise, sensible, intelligent people, Making the very most of the time, buying up each opportunity… Therefore do not be vague and thoughtless and foolish, but understanding and firmly grasping what the will of the Lord is.” Ephesians 5:15 – 17 Amplified Bible

Circle the words “Live purposefully” in that verse.

This is the kind of life God expects us to live; a life that is lived guided by his purposes. A purpose is something that you live for, a reason for the things you do. Webster’s Dictionary defines purpose like this: Something set up as an object or end to be attained and then it has similar words like: Intention, and Determination. So what are the purposes that God has for me? God has given us 5 purposes that we are to base our life on, in fact these are the 5 purposes that we get our purpose statement from…these are the things that we are chase after with our “One life to Live.” These 5 purposes are what we are going to begin a 40-day journey on.

Beginning next week we will start going through these 5 purposes and reading a book based on them in our new small groups that will be beginning at the same time. It is going to be an amazing journey and an extraordinary time in the history of this group!

But to get ready for this amazing time we are going to spend the rest of tonight focusing on these three questions beginning with the one just asked, “What does God want from me?” In a nutshell what God wants is real simple… He wants your whole life!!!

The Bible says, “Give yourselves completely to God since you have been given new life. And use your whole body as a tool to do what is right for the glory of God.” Romans 6:13 NLT

Give yourself completely, give your whole body not just part of it, not 70% not even 99.9%, but give everything you are to God. That is what God wants from you. God wants it all. One time I had a friend who challenged me with this little test… He asked me if one day, one 24-hour period was 100% then how much of that did I simply think about God, or what God had for me to do that day. He wasn’t even asking me how much did I do for God in a day, he was just asking me how much I thought about him, or talked to him, or listened, that was it. When I began to think that through I really could only say maybe 7% or on a good day maybe 13 or 14%. How could I be giving my whole life completely to God if I was only “THINKING” about him less than 10%!