From Chapter 4 of Rick Warren’s book:‘The Purpose Driven Life’:
Made to Last Forever
God has . . . planted eternity in the human heart Ecclesiastes 3:11 (NLT)
Surely God would not have created such a being as man to exist
only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality.
Abraham Lincoln
This life is not all there is. Life on earth is just the dress rehearsal for 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, the practice workout before the actual game, the warm-up lap before the race begins. This life is preparation for the next. Your time on earth is, as Sir Thomas Brown said, “but a small parenthesis in eternity. You were made to last forever.
The Bible says, “God has . . . planted eternity in the human heart.1 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. Your earthly body is just a temporary residence for your spirit. The Bible calls your earthly body a “tent,” but refers to your future body 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.”2
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. You will start living in light of eternity, and that will color how you handle every relationship, task and 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 higher premium on relationships and character instead of fame and wealth or achievements of even fun. Your priorities are reordered. Keeping up with trends, fashions, and popular values just doesn’t matter as much anymore. Paul said, “I once thought all these things were so very important, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done.”3 ~Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life: Zondervan (Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530, 2002), 36-38
