The Importance of Pondering Your Passing

It has often been joked that there are only two guarantees in life: death and taxes.

Yet, few of us want to ponder our end—it feels morbid, awkward, or only causes anxiety. Nevertheless, Scripture reminds us that life is short and as such we should “redeem” (buy up) the time. We should be intentional in how we live—for however long God gives us.

In this episode, we discuss what Scripture says about the shortness of life, why it is important to embrace and ponder our passing, and several practical ways to live boldly in light of our forthcoming death. Simply, to live with our end in mind will change how we live today.

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Time is short (life is a vapor)

• James 4:13–14 – Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.
• Psalm 89:47 (ESV) – Remember how short my time is …
• Job 7:7 (NKJV) – Oh, remember that my life is a breath!
• Psalm 144:4 – Man is like a breath; his days are like a passing shadow.
• Matthew 6:27 (ESV) – And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?
• Psalm 90:9, 12 (NKJV) – [Moses who lived to be 120 said] We finish our years like a sigh. … So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
• Psalm 39:4 – [David] “Yahweh, cause me to know my end and what is the extent of my days; let me know how transient [fleeting] I am.”

Embrace the shortness of life

• If you haven’t found something worth dying for, you haven’t found something worth living for.
• Are our priorities marked by the priorities of God?
  • Matthew 6:10 – [Lord’s Prayer] Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
  • What is taking place in heaven is to take place on earth in and through our lives (and the Church)
    • WILL (thelēma) – will, inclination, desire, design, purpose, plan, intent … often used with the assumption of obedience (to “do” God’s will – see Matthew 7:21; 12:50; 18:14; 21:31)
• Live as if life is short and eternity is long.
• Are we living in light of eternity?
• Jonathan Edwards – “Lord, stamp eternity on my eyeballs.”
• Leonard Ravenhill (quoting Edwards) – “Oh God, stamp eternity on my eyeballs! … You know if God should stamp eternity or even judgment on our eyeballs, or if you’d like on the fleshy tablets of our hearts, I’m quite convinced we’d be a very very different tribe of people, God’s people, in the world today.”

How to practically live in light of your death?

1. Use your limited time wisely

• Ephesians 5:16 – redeeming the time (buy up the time) …

2. Ponder how you want to end … what will it take to get there

• What do you want others to say about you at your funeral?
• Consider writing out your own eulogy (what you want people to say at your funeral). Take it a step further and create a list of key relationships (spouse, kids, friends, coworkers, neighbors, unbelievers, church members, etc.) and write a short paragraph of what you’d want them to say about you at your death.
  • Then prayerfully consider what it means to live now so you become the person you want to die as

3. Freshly surrender your life to the Lord Jesus Christ and live boldly for Him

• 1 Corinthians 6:19–20 – Or do you not know that your body is a sanctuary of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.
• C.T. Studd – Only one life, twill soon be past,
Only what’s done for Christ will last.
And when I am dying, how happy, I’ll be,
If the lamp of my life has been burned out for Thee.
• C.T. Studd – Let us not glide through this world and then slip quietly out of it without having blown the trumpet loud and long for our Blessed Redeemer. At the very least, let us see to it that when the Devil gets news of our departure from the battlefield, he throws a thanksgiving party in hell.

4. Remember the shortness of life and the greatness of eternity

• Thomas Chalmers (Scottish minister in late 1700s) – Oh to fully realize the littleness of time and greatness of eternity!

FOOTNOTES

Photo Credit: Pavel Lozovikov

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Question: How are you living now in light of your death?