Made to Last Forever

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 on the other side of death—in
eternity—than you will here. Earth is the
staging area, the preschool, the tryout for your
life in eternity. It is the practice workout before
the actual game; the warm-up lap before the
race begins. This life is preparation for the
next.
At most, you will live a hundred years on
earth, but you will spend forever in eternity.
Your time on earth is, as Sir Thomas Browne
said, “but a small parenthesis in eternity.” You
were made to last forever.
The Bible says, “God has planted eternity in
the human heart.”


You have an inborn instinct
that longs for immortality. This is because God
designed you, in his image, to live for eternity.
Even though we know everyone eventually
dies, death always seems unnatural and unfair.
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 spirit. God’s Word calls your earthly body
0310264839_whatonearth.qxd  9/16/04  3:24 PM  Page 28“a tent,” but refers to your future body in
heaven as “a house.” The Bible says, “When
this tent we live in—our body here on earth—is
torn down, God will have a house in heaven for
us to live in, a home he himself has made, which
will last forever.”


While life on earth offers many choices,
eternity offers only two choices: heaven or hell.
Your relationship to God on earth will
determine your relationship to him in
eternity. If you learn to love and trust God’s
Son, Jesus, you will be invited to spend the rest
of eternity with him. On the other hand, if you
reject his love, forgiveness, and salvation, you
will spend eternity apart from God.
The brilliant Oxford professor and author 
C. S. Lewis said, “There are two kinds of
people: those who say to God ‘Thy will be done’
and those to whom God says, ‘All right then,
have it your way.’” Tragically, many people will
have to endure eternity without God because
they chose to live without him here on earth.
When you fully comprehend that there is
more to life than just here and now, and you
realize that life is just preparation for eternity,
you will begin to live differently on a daily basis.
You will start living in light of eternity, and that
will color how you handle every relationship,
every task, and every circumstance. Suddenly
many activities, goals, and even problems that
seemed so important will appear trivial, petty,
and unworthy of your attention. The closer you
live to God, the smaller everything else appears.
When you live in light of eternity, your values
change. You use your time and money more
wisely. You place a higher premium on relationships and character instead of fame or wealth
or achievements or even fun. Your priorities are
reordered. Keeping up with trends, fashions,
and popular values just doesn’t matter as much
anymore. St. Paul said, “I once thought all these
things were so very important, but now I consider
them worthless because of what Christ has done.”


If your time on earth were all there is to your
life, I would suggest you start living it up
immediately. You could forget being good and
ethical, and you wouldn’t have to worry about
any consequences of your actions. You could
indulge yourself in total self-centeredness
because your actions would have no long-term
repercussions. But—and this makes all the
difference—death is not the end of you! Death
is not your termination, but your transition into
eternity, so there are eternal consequences to
everything you do on earth. Every act of our
lives strikes some chord that will vibrate in
eternity.
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. There’s far more
to life than just here and now! Today is the
visible tip of the iceberg. Eternity is all the rest
you don’t see underneath the surface.
What is it going to be like in eternity with
God? Frankly, the capacity of our brains cannot
handle the wonder and greatness of heaven. It
would be like trying to describe the Internet to
an ant. It’s futile. Words have not been invented
that could possibly convey the experience of
eternity. The Bible says, “No mere man has ever
seen, heard or even imagined what wonderful
things God has ready for those who love the Lord.”


However, God has given us glimpses of
eternity in his Word. We know that right now
God is preparing an eternal home for us. In
heaven we will be reunited with loved ones who
are believers, released from all pain and suffering, rewarded for our faithfulness on earth,
and reassigned to do work that we will enjoy
doing. We won’t lie around on clouds with halos
playing harps! We will enjoy unbroken fellowship with God, and he will enjoy us for an
unlimited, endless forever. 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.”


C. S. Lewis captured the concept of eternity
on the last page of the Chronicles of Narnia,
his seven-book children’s fiction series: “For us
this is the end of all the stories. . . . But for them
it was only the beginning of the real story. All
their life in this world . . . had only been the
cover and the title page: now at last they were
beginning Chapter One of the Great Story,
which no one on earth has read, which goes on
for ever, and in which every chapter is better
than the one before.”


God has a purpose for your life on earth, but
it doesn’t end here. His plan involves far more
than the few decades you will spend on this
planet. It’s more than “the opportunity of a
lifetime”; God offers you an opportunity
beyond your lifetime. The Bible says, “[God’s]
plans endure forever; his purposes last eternally.”


The only time most people think about eternity is at funerals, and then it’s often shallow,
sentimental thinking, based on ignorance. You
may feel it’s morbid to think about death, but
actually it’s unhealthy to live in denial of death
and not consider what is inevitable.


Only a fool
would go through life unprepared for what we
all know will eventually happen. You need to
think more about eternity, not less.
Just as the nine months you spent in your
mother’s womb were not an end in themselves
but preparation for life, so this life is preparation
for the next. If you have a relationship with God
through Jesus, you don’t need to fear death. It
is the door to eternity. It will be the last hour of
your time on earth, but it won’t be the last of
you. Rather than being the end of your life, it
will be your birthday into eternal life. The Bible
says, “This world is not our home; we are looking
forward to our everlasting home in heaven.”


Measured against eternity, your time on earth
is just a blink of an eye, but the consequences of
it will last forever. The deeds of this life are the
destiny of the next. We should be “realizing that
every moment we spend in these earthly bodies is
time spent away from our eternal home in heaven
with Jesus.”


Years ago a popular slogan encouraged
people to live each day as “the first day of the
rest of your life.” Actually, it would be wiser to
live each day as if it were the last day of your
life. It ought to be the business of every day to
prepare for our final day.


Point to Ponder: This life is not all there is.


QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
Why do you think God made us to last forever?
Why do we spend more time worrying about what won’t last and so little time preparing for eternity, which will last forever?
What are you doing right now to prepare for eternity