How Shall We Then Live - Part Two
(Graduatin speech continued)
So, how are you going to live your life? What kind of person are you going to be?
When my daughter was born, we put a lot of thought into what to name her. Her name is one my husband and I put together. "Anna" means "grace" and "lyn" (spelled slightly differently in Welsh) is a word that means "a rushing stream or waterfall". When she was a baby, I made a plaque to put on her wall. It had the meaning of her name, and it had some Scripture verses, one from Isaiah 55:1 which says "Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters;" and from John 7:37, 38 "Jesus stood up and cried out, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, 'Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water'".
We chose that name for our daughter, because we wanted her to remember every time she heard her name that God's grace is what she needs every day, and that the thirst of her soul can only be quenched by Jesus Christ. And this is true of all of us.
We are all thirsty in our souls, and our greatest temptation every day of our lives is to try to quench that thirst with anything we can think of but God, whether it be success, money, clothes, power, or prestige. The truth is that God is our source of satisfaction and all other things in life must revolve around our relationship with Him.
One of my dear friends passed away about this time a few years ago. To the world's standards, he died a failure. He had spent the first 45 years of his life trying to satisfy the needs of his heart with relationships, sex, hobbies, work, money and alcohol. But it all failed him. One day, he was taken to the hospital and died on the operating table in the emergency room. He had overdosed on something, and the doctors were ready to send him to the morgue when suddenly he came back to life. He told me, "When I died, I was not a Christian. When I woke, I was a Christian." He only lived another 5 years. At first, not much changed after his brush with death, and even to the casual observer, his faith in Christ seemed nothing more than an outward profession. He had been an alcoholic before, and he was still and alcoholic.
Within a year, he started connnecting with other believers, and his faith in Christ began to grow. he found a church and started meeting with a pastor who encouraged him to get some help with his alcohol addiction. He finally quit drinking, but sadly, the damage that had been done was so bad there was no hope for a physical recovery. He spent most of the last nine months of his life in a hospital bed dying of cancer brought on by decades of drinking. In those last months, we talked a lot, and our conversations would usually turn to the Lord. He would tell me how much he loved God, and then he would say "God has never let me down."
How could someone who was lying in bed in excruciating pain and dying of cancer which was brought on by his own foolishness say with such conviction, "God has never let me down."
In the last days of his life, my friend had finally learned how to live. he had developed a relationship with God. He was drinking from the foundation of living water, and his soul was being satisfied.
If we want to know how to live, we must make loving God the number one priority in our lives and learn to run to Him first and drink deeply when we feel thirst in our souls.
So, how are you going to live your life? What kind of person are you going to be?
When my daughter was born, we put a lot of thought into what to name her. Her name is one my husband and I put together. "Anna" means "grace" and "lyn" (spelled slightly differently in Welsh) is a word that means "a rushing stream or waterfall". When she was a baby, I made a plaque to put on her wall. It had the meaning of her name, and it had some Scripture verses, one from Isaiah 55:1 which says "Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters;" and from John 7:37, 38 "Jesus stood up and cried out, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, 'Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water'".
We chose that name for our daughter, because we wanted her to remember every time she heard her name that God's grace is what she needs every day, and that the thirst of her soul can only be quenched by Jesus Christ. And this is true of all of us.
We are all thirsty in our souls, and our greatest temptation every day of our lives is to try to quench that thirst with anything we can think of but God, whether it be success, money, clothes, power, or prestige. The truth is that God is our source of satisfaction and all other things in life must revolve around our relationship with Him.
One of my dear friends passed away about this time a few years ago. To the world's standards, he died a failure. He had spent the first 45 years of his life trying to satisfy the needs of his heart with relationships, sex, hobbies, work, money and alcohol. But it all failed him. One day, he was taken to the hospital and died on the operating table in the emergency room. He had overdosed on something, and the doctors were ready to send him to the morgue when suddenly he came back to life. He told me, "When I died, I was not a Christian. When I woke, I was a Christian." He only lived another 5 years. At first, not much changed after his brush with death, and even to the casual observer, his faith in Christ seemed nothing more than an outward profession. He had been an alcoholic before, and he was still and alcoholic.
Within a year, he started connnecting with other believers, and his faith in Christ began to grow. he found a church and started meeting with a pastor who encouraged him to get some help with his alcohol addiction. He finally quit drinking, but sadly, the damage that had been done was so bad there was no hope for a physical recovery. He spent most of the last nine months of his life in a hospital bed dying of cancer brought on by decades of drinking. In those last months, we talked a lot, and our conversations would usually turn to the Lord. He would tell me how much he loved God, and then he would say "God has never let me down."
How could someone who was lying in bed in excruciating pain and dying of cancer which was brought on by his own foolishness say with such conviction, "God has never let me down."
In the last days of his life, my friend had finally learned how to live. he had developed a relationship with God. He was drinking from the foundation of living water, and his soul was being satisfied.
If we want to know how to live, we must make loving God the number one priority in our lives and learn to run to Him first and drink deeply when we feel thirst in our souls.
Comments
I hear so much about broken lives when I teach state classes for DUI offenders. I try to inspire people to turn their lives around.
Good, writing!