Living A Life That Matters
By: Kristen L. McNulty
Reprint rights available on request. Email the author at kristenmcnulty@hotmail.com.
In this world, we face a lot of temptation to not just be like everyone else, but to be one up from everyone else. To become the 2.0 version of our friends and neighbors, so to speak. Our parents and our grandparents' generation called this problem "trying to keep up with the Joneses". But in our generation, we don't want to just keep up with the Joneses, we want to surpass them. It's not enough to be just like our friends and neighbors, we must be better and be the ones that everyone else wants to be like.
Social media has further turned us all into performance artists. Think I'm exaggerating? Think about proposals these days. Wedding proposals used to be about a guy getting down on his knee in a quiet, personal moment, between the couple. Proposals today often involve a complete social media content creation experience, including photographers and videographers and a perfectly scripted scene. And that's just one of our experiences. Whether it's a proposal, prom-posal, birth announcement or vacation, it's not just enough to experience them just like everyone else, we have to one up them to stand out from the pack.
This has placed us in a losing scenario time and time again, because no matter how great any experience is in our own life, we're never gonna be able to keep up with this person down the block or down the street or in the next town over. The best vacation we take can be outdone by a millionaire and even the millionaires vacation experience can be outdone by a billionaire.
An endless pursuit that comes up empty
So we are caught up in this endless pursuit of building a life that can win the applause of our friends and neighbors, which presents a problem for just about everyone of us because it leads us to living a life we are dissatisfied with and a life where we are desperately trying to win the applause of the wrong people in our lives. But this presents an even bigger problem for you and I as Christians because as Christians we know we are not called to live just like everyone else on planet earth. We aren't called to pursue the things of this world and love the things of this world. So if our lives look just like everyone else's and we are caught up in chasing the same things they are, we've got a problem. We are taught in 1 John 2:15-17:
Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world. And this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave. But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever. 1 John 2:15-17 NLT
Sound familiar? So many people are caught up in this craving for physical pleasure, craving for everything they see, and holding pride in achievements and possessions, but we are not called to be one of them. We are called to abandon that pursuit and instead pursue a life where we are chasing after Jesus and His Kingdom, instead of chasing the things this world has to offer that will only leave us empty time and time again. Paul encourages us with this verse in Ephesians 4:1:
Therefore I, a prisoner for serving the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God. Ephesians 4:1
Is that the kind of life we're living?
Lead a life that is worth of your calling. Is that the kind of life you are living right now? Is that the kind of life I'm living right now? If the answer to that question is anything other than an absolute yes, then we need to make changes here and now. Because we know this life is not forever, yet what we do in this life does have eternal implications. We could waste our days chasing after empty things that serve no purpose, or we can live a life chasing after Jesus and filling our time with the things He calls us to. Things like:
Loving God and loving others (Matthew 22:37-39).
Praying about everything (Philippians 4:6).
Encouraging others (Hebrews 10:24-25).
Serving others (Mark 10:45).
Forgiving those who have wronged us (Ephesians 4:32).
Sharing the Gospel far and wide (Matthew 28:19).
And sharing our money (2 Corinthians 9:7).
That is a life that matters, one that may not make us an Instagram influencer, but one that will ensure we make a lasting difference by investing our time and energy into only the eternal, not the things of this earth that are wasting away.
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