Writing My Obituary

This morning I woke up to the news that a friend of mine died yesterday. And while sad, I am delighted that he is rejoicing with Jesus.

Years ago, I read a book that made the suggestion to write your own obituary now.

While we don’t often enjoy pondering death, Scripture makes it clear that our days are numbered and time is short:

• Psalm 89:47 (NKJV) – 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.
• Psalm 90:9–10, 12 (ESV) – For all our days … end like a sigh. The years of our life … are soon gone … So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom.
• The Bible also says in Ecclesiastes 6:12 that life is like a shadow that only temporarily appears. And in Job 14:2, it says that life is like a flower that flourishes, then quickly withers and fades.
• 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.

The point of writing your obit now was to force you to realize that you don’t have unlimited time. Time is short (it’s like your breath on a cold day, where you see it for a moment before it vanishes).

When you realize the brevity of time, it also forces you to determine what you actually want said when you die. What kind of a life do you want to live for Christ? How radical in your pursuit of and obedience to Him are you willing to be?

And I’ve found that when I realize the shortness of life, it gives greater eternal-mindedness to how I live. When you realize life is short but eternity is long (like … forever long), values and priorities change. I can willingly and far more easily suffer difficulty and hardship for the sake of the Gospel and the glory of Jesus now, when I realize it is but a drop in the bucket compared to eternity.

Since I originally wrote my obituary years ago, I’ve often pulled it out, read through it, and tweaked a few things based on what God is doing and stirring in my heart.

It’s quite the sobering exercise … yet, one in which you gain a lot of clarity, freedom, and peace.

Interested?

Here is my quick suggestion: write out your own obituary (or a eulogy – what someone often reads about you at your funeral). Write it in third person. Be prayerful and gain God’s heart for what He desires your life to look like at the end.

You’re not writing it for the life you have right now, but the life you want to have lived by your end. In short, it is a declaration of where God is leading you and the life He wants to form within you (ultimately, it should look like Jesus, the One in whom we are being conformed to; see Romans 8:29).

Here is the start of what I wrote …

Nathan Johnson was a man of God. He was happy, healthy, holy, humble, hungry, unhurried, hospitable, and hopeful … but foremost, he was a son of the King of kings. He was a man known for love and unhurried living. A man who was obsessively passionate for the things of God and not only taught with boldness the Word of God but also lived it with his life.

Am I all those things now? Not yet. And some of them may not even make sense to someone outside my life; but my list of eight “Hs” came about over years of a burden I have from God in my life, and something I often pray He continues to deepen and develop in me.

Another suggestion is to take the time and create a paragraph for each of the key people in your life, of what you want them to be able to say about you at the end of your life. My list includes: Jesus, family, friends and colleagues, the men I mentored, and the general public. For each of those groups, I wrote a paragraph summarizing what they say about me and how I lived.

WHY?

Again, the purpose is to give your life greater clarity not only about its brevity, but also about the importance of living dependent upon and abiding in Christ Jesus.

It gives language to the man or woman of God you desire to be, what Scripture declares is possible, and what Christ wants to form in you.

At some point, we too will find ourselves on the other side of eternity. But until that point arrives, I want to live fully for Jesus Christ.

Our time is short, eternity is long, so let’s be intentional in the life we live and purposeful in allowing God to shape us ever more into the image of Christ (for His glory, honor, and praise).

Know I am praying for you and cheering you unto that end,
– Nathan

P.S. – If you want to read the full eulogy I wrote years ago and continue to tweak, I decided to post it here.

FOOTNOTES

Photo Credit: Kevin Carden