You Don’t Only Live Once
When I found out I had cancer it changed me. Some of it was for the better, and some of it was for the worse. Fourteen years later, I now understand that when we go through a major event in our lives that alters us forever, there is an adjustment phase. Sometimes while in that adjustment phase we think we have stumbled on to some brilliant realization. But over time, we may find that we were too influenced by the moment to really be thinking clearly.
One of the realities you are brought to when you get a diagnosis that may result in your death is the brevity of life. You are suddenly very aware of your mortality. Immediately you feel like time was ripped from your grasp. The truth is that time has never been on your side and you have never been guaranteed another day. The only difference is that you have something tangible now that reminds you of that reality when before it was only a passing thought.
One of the biggest mistakes I made in dealing with my mortality was to think to myself, “I’d better do this today. I am only living this one time and it may not last much longer.” While this notion caused me to certainly make the most of every opportunity, Satan was also able to use it against me. Through a worldly perspective he caused some of my priorities to change. Sometimes I excused myself from the people who needed me most and the guidelines I had always lived by in order to pursue brief moments of enjoyment and dreams that were not based on eternal pursuits.
We often decide we are going to “go for it” or participate in something because we say to ourselves that this is our only chance to live. But I am telling you this is a lie. There is a second period of living that awaits us beyond this material world. The peace and the pleasures of that forevermore city far exceed anything we will ever get to experience here.
I have learned that Satan’s biggest tool is distraction. He occupies us with present-day desires of the flesh and mind and he causes us to place too high a value on the things of the earth. You may not have ever consciously said to yourself that you are living for today, but I am pretty sure that is how you mostly behave. You are caught up in a world that is passing away. It takes stepping back and evaluating the byproducts of your consistent behavior before you can realize exactly what is most important to you.
Please take my advice and understand that you don’t only live once. At least you don’t if you are doing things God’s way. Satan would love for you to only live once and to die eternally in hell forever with him. But remember Jesus came to save you from that terrible fate. You can live again if you live for God. And if you live for God and you concentrate on heaven you will gain the wisdom that reminds you that there are many earthly experiences and dreams that are worth the missing.
“If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, sitting at the right hand of God. Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth. For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory” – Colossians 3:1-4.
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AUTHOR: Jeremiah Tatum
