Sunday School at 9 am | worship at 10 am

A Life That Matters

Occasionally someone asks me what I like to do for enjoyment.  I thought about that for a minute.  I play golf once or twice a year, but when your golf game is as bad as mine, you don’t get a lot of enjoyment out of it.  Some people enjoy fishing, but not me.  Fishing is not really relaxing for me.  It’s an exercise in futility.  Consider the objective.  In order to be successful, you have to match wits with a fish.  More often than not, the fish outwits me, meaning I seldom catch anything.  This spells failure.  But success is not much better. If I do catch something, I have to clean it.  I don’t know about you, but decapitating a fish, scraping its scales off and gutting it of its entrails does not provide me with a sense of satisfaction and relaxation.  Now if I wouldn’t have anything to eat otherwise then sure, I would feel satisfied by catching and cleaning fish.  Otherwise I prefer to take the money I would spend on bait and tackle and just go to the store any buy a fish in nice neat package.  So activities like golf and fishing really do not provide a lot of enjoyment for me.  Just frustration.  I don’t need more frustration in my life.

You know what I really enjoy doing (other than grilling, jet skiing, and walking on the beach)? Mowing the lawn.  Painting the house.  Sounds like work, doesn’t it?  Sure it’s work, but if I do a good job I have instant satisfaction.  I can survey my work and see immediate improvement.  That’s what brings me satisfaction, and thus enjoyment.  This is what we all want, isn’t it?  We want to know that what we do matters.

A few weeks ago I ventured out into the warm, humid August air to work in my yard.  Taking dominion over even a small spot of earth brings me immense satisfaction.  But satisfaction soon turned to concern, then to alarm.  Within the hour I would have two serious heart attacks. 

When you’re on the verge of leaving this world, you can’t help but wonder if you’re ready—ready to meet your God.  Now I want to assure you that I have no doubts about my salvation.  My eternal soul is safely in the hands of my Savior.  But that’s not what I mean by being ready to meet the Lord.  There’s another dimension of readiness.  It has to do with knowing your life matters, that you have made a difference in the world that will have eternal ramifications. 

This is what we’re going to talk about Sunday—having the assurance that your life and your life’s work matters.  For eternity.  You can prepare yourself by reading 1 Corinthians 3:10-15. It’s about having your life’s work tested.  This promises to be a very significant message.   If you are not able to be here, you can go to our website at 1christianchurch.org and listen online, or you can email me at mikesouthards@gmail.com and I will send you the notes.