What Is Your Life?

Burning Questions

James 4:14 ESV

yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.

No folks....you will never face a more challenging question in your life......

Notice it does not say “what is life”...... because really no one has real answer for that one.

It doesn’t say what is our life.....if it asked that.... we could pool all of our thinking and come up with some sort of answer...

It says, “WHAT IS YOUR LIFE”.......

Then James goes on to give us the answer...”YOU ARE MIST OR VAPOR.......THAT APPEARS FOR A LITTLE TIME.....THEN VANISHES”

When we start down this road of thinking.....we will come across three main in life. Children usually are first to come up with the question:

Where did I come from?

And we dog gone sure ought to have an answer for that when it comes up.....or they will get the answer from someone else who you may or may not approve of.

WHY AM I HERE?

And when we get to adulthood, at some point most folks ask:

WHERE TO I GO FROM HERE?

And when your kids are grown and you feel your body and life start changing some folks ask:

REVIEW THE THREE MAIN QUESTIONS.........

When you look at Holly Wood, mass media and various poets (Art in life sort of thing)

you only go around once in life so you gotta grab all the gusto ya can

you hear people life isn’t just or fair

One says, ‘life is a feast’

another one says life is a long dark winter

one famous movie said, “life is like a box of chocolates...........”

So when this kind of stuff comes up....a-lot of folk will start to reflect on your own life. How will you “see” yourself?

And when folk start this kind of self reflection......some see it good and some see it not so good and everywhere in between..

But the more you look at it (and the older you get) you see where James is exactly right about your life....

Life is like a steam coming off a pot on the stove.....it just goes up a little bit and disappears. Some things you are cooking smells (good and bad)

When our temporal life is talked about in the Bible....it always talks about is a something brief and passing......

2 Corinthians 5:1 ESV

For we know that if the tent that is our earthly home is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

Ecclesiastes 2:26 ESV

For to the one who pleases him God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner he has given the business of gathering and collecting, only to give to one who pleases God. This also is vanity and a striving after wind.

2 Peter 1:13–14 ESV

I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to stir you up by way of reminder, since I know that the putting off of my body will be soon, as our Lord Jesus Christ made clear to me.

When we start thinking more and more about life....

We can only come to the conclusion that LIFE is a MAD house..........

we think about how many folks committed suicide each year...

How many folks died from the various forms of cancer.......auto accident......

History tells us that about 40 million died during WWI (both civilian and military)

Right after WWI about a 16 million folks died from a flu pandemic

During WWII about 75 million died.....military, deliberate genocide, massacres, disease and starvation...

WWII marked the beginning of the nuclear age....the WWII numbers include the 200,000 who died on the days we dropped the atomic bombs on Japan...

These numbers are small compared to how many people we can kill today if nuclear war were to break out......

The one thing I have learned about history is that mankind/we ...don’t learn much from history

Today we have all our science and technology....man has made great strides we have made with our “progressive education”

.....But still we have:

rampant sin

poverty and homelessness

broken homes

broken lives

record divorce

lower church attendance

and still war around the world

Folks we still have God given life in our bodies. if you did not have you would not be hear or listening on youtube or facebook..

you’ve got emotional life....other wise you would not laugh

you have a social life.....other wise folks would not be texting all the time

you have an intellectual life............a Spiritual life

John 10:10 ESV

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.

2 Corinthians 5:17 ESV

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

John 14:6 ESV

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

I am the way.....without HIM there is no going.....

and the truth.....without that there is no knowing......

and the life.....without that there is no growing.....

“I am the way”.....that’s external

“I am the truth”.....that’s internal

“I am the life”.....that’s eternal

So the whole thing is about LIFE.......Every kind of life.....but mostly about eternal life

And the thing about life does....where ever it goes.....life begets life.....

Galatians 2:20 ESV

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

If I were to ask you today if you are saved....you would probably say yes....well then I would ask when....you would tell me the story......

Then I would asked, “What are you saved from” Hell????:

bitterness

lust

gluttony

cheating lying

wanting other peoples stuff’

being mean to folks......what

I would say right here that a lot of folks in this country are not actually saved....even thought they claim to be

Folks we all need more than saving.....we need cleansing:

We need endwelling (do you know what that means)?

If you got up in of folks and confess your sins and gave yourself to Christ.....And after that you life was no different....your prayer life does not change, your study life does not change, your attitude does not change..

There are only two types of people in the world I(not black or white) There are those who are dead in sin and those who are not.......

Once you are REBORN in life…,and I mean actually REBORN.......you think different you act different...

Unfortunately there are a lot of folks that are only half saved…(pause and look around the room)

Now just what do I mean by that? I mean a great many folks go to the cross…but never get on the cross..

And when you don’t do that.....you do not get your sins forgiven.....and go the next day and do the same lousy stuff again....WHAT KIND OF A SALVATION IS THAT?????

Can you imagine a man going up to a judge for a crime… you have been found guilty of stealing this purse how to plea.....YES I DID IT....you did it?......have you ever stollen any other pourses?....Yes…I’ve kept a record 133.....(tell the story) are you sorry?…(in a funny voice) YES I’M SORRY.....

Then the judge says well your forgiven.....I forgive you for all the purses you’ve stolen in the past and will steal in the future.......

Would that wonderfully insane....

If you really reborn......once you get the new life....you no longer need or want the other any other life....but being IN CHRIST.......