Day 2 - Riverside Indonesian Fellowship

RIVERSIDE INDONESIAN FELLOWSHIP
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Bible Study 2020
THE PURPOSE DRIVEN LIFE
DAY 2
MADE TO LAST FOREVER

This life is not all there is. Life on earth is just the dress rehearsal before the real production. You will spend far more time in eternity than you will here. This life is just a preparation for the next life. At most you will live a hundred years on earth, but you will spend forever in heaven. You were made to last forever. You have an inborn instinct that longs for immortality.

God designed you in His image, to live for eternity. The reason we feel we should live forever is that God wired our brains with that desire. One day your heart will stop beating. That will be the end of your body and your time on earth, but it will not be the end of you. Your earthly body is just a temporary residence for your soul. The Bible calls your earthly body a tent, but your future body a house.

2 Corinthians 5:1 says, “For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” While life on earth offers many choices, eternity offers only two: heaven or hell. Your relationship with God on earth will determine your relationship to Him in eternity. If you learn to love and trust Jesus, you will go to heaven.

On the other hand if you reject His love and forgiveness and salvation, you will spend eternity apart from God in hell. When you fully comprehend that there is more to life than just here and now, and you realize that life is really a preparation for eternity, you will begin to live differently. You will start living in light of eternity that will affect how you handle every relationship, task and circumstance.

Suddenly many activities, goals, even problems that seemed so important will appear trivial, petty and unworthy of your attention. When you live in light of eternity your values will change. You use your time and money differently. You put more importance on relationships and character instead of fame, wealth, achievements or even fun. Keeping up with trends and popular values just don’t matter much anymore.

Philippians 3:7 says, “But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ.” Death is not the end but the entry into eternity, so there are eternal consequences to everything you do on earth. The most damaging aspect of contemporary living is short term thinking. To make the most of your life, you must keep the vision of eternity continually in your mind and the value of it in your heart.

What is heaven like? Frankly, our brains cannot handle the wonder and greatness of heaven. 1 Corinthians 2:9 says, “No mere man has ever seen, heard, or even imagined what wonderful things which God has prepared for those who love the Lord.” We know that God has prepared an eternal home for us. In heaven we will be reunited with those loved ones who are believers.

They will be released from all pain and suffering and they are rewarded for their faithfulness on earth. And they will be assigned to do work that they will enjoy. One day Jesus will say, “Come you who are blessed by my Father, take your inheritance, the Kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.”(Matthew 25:34). God has a purpose for your life, but it does not end on earth.

Most people only think about eternity at funerals. Even though we know that everyone dies, death often seems unfair and unnatural. If you have a relationship with God through Jesus, you don’t need to fear death. It is the door to eternity. Only a fool would go through life unprepared for eternity. We need to think more about eternity, not less. Death will be your birthday into eternal life.

Measured against eternity, our time on earth is just the blink of an eye, but the consequences of it will last forever. A popular slogan says, live each day as “the first day of the rest of your life.” It is much wiser to live each day as if it is the last day of your life. This gives you courage to do what Jesus wants us to do without any fear of death, because “to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (Phil. 1:21).
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