Passion: The Bright Light Of Glory By Louie GiglioSample

One Life

One of the great rip offs in life is the ability sin has to dull our senses, causing us to lose sight of the brief moment of time we have on planet Earth. Somehow, we get wrapped up in the most mundane things, while at any moment our breath will end. We are transient. Temporary. Fragile. Finite. Even when we roar with all our power and might, we are just a whimper in the vast cosmos, like a shadow fading with the setting sun.

The Psalmist helps us refocus with this prayer: "Show me, O LORD, my life's end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life. You have made my days a mere handbreadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man's life is but a breath. "Selah" Man is a mere phantom as he goes to and fro: He bustles about, but only in vain; he heaps up wealth, not knowing who will get it.” Psalm 39:4-6.

To put it another way, we only get one brief shot at life. And what we do with it matters, forever. So we need God’s help every day to treasure what deserves to be treasured and to enjoy what will always satisfy.

The beauty of grace is that it awakens us to more and invites us to what lasts. We come to know Jesus by faith, and through Him we embrace the grace-bought opportunity to use our voices, our gifts, our influence, our joy, our suffering, our weakness and our pain to boast in His goodness. In our less, He becomes more. And in our more, we know that He is greater still.

And the power in it all is that no matter what the journey deals us, we know that no circumstance and no power can keep us from the love of God nor keep us from telling the world about Him. So life, no matter how brief, takes on the broad strokes of eternity. And, when lived for Him, our days really do end up lasting forever.

In the end, there is nothing to risk, just everything to gain.

“But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.” Philippians 3:7-11.

Why play it safe? Why sleepwalk, when the Spirit of the Living God is wide-awake? You only get one shot, a brief few seconds to make your life count. It’s your move.