"Don't Waste Your Life"

I love this time of year. The sunflowers are out and the roads are lined with those little sunshine flowers that seem to dance in the wind. It means that fall is just around the corner and the harvest is coming in. I even smelled green chili roasting yesterday. Sweet Corn should be available soon and the state fair starts in two weeks. October is our annual Hot Air Balloon Festival and before you know it Thanksgiving and Christmas will be here sending us into winter. But August has to be my favorite.
I am reading John Piper’s book “Don’t Waste Your Life”. It seems the Lord has been challenging us in our personal walk and lifestyle. There is always that balance of living “in” the world and yet not living “for” it. In the end, can we stand before our God and hear those sweet and tender words “Well done, good and faithful servant.” It was put beautifully by another adoptive family who has endured much with their premature first born and now adopting 2 older boys and a beautiful little girl with cerebral palsy from Liberia. Friends who had watched them endure so much with their first now ask why would you want to bring on “trouble”? As they pondered that, they realized this “Because we want to live our lives well”.
John Piper asks: “Whose life is a tragedy? Two woman pushing 80, one single all her life the other a widow and medical doctor serving in Cameroon, West Africa pouring their lives for one great thing: to make Jesus Christ known among the unreached, the poor and the sick. Their brakes failed, the car went over a cliff and were both killed instantly. Or the couple who retired early: he was 59, she 51, living in Florida where they cruise on their 30 foot trawler, play softball and collect shells. Picture them before Christ at the great Day of Judgment “Look, Lord. See my shells.” Come to the end of your life – your one and only precious, God-given life – and let the last great work of your life, before you give an account to your Creator, be this: playing softball and collecting shells. That, is a tragedy. And people today are spending billions of dollars to persuade you to embrace that tragic dream. Over against that, I put my protest: Don’t buy it. Don’t waste your life.”
Galatians 6:14 says: “Far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” John Piper says “If we desire that there be no boasting except in the cross, then we must live near the cross – indeed we must live ON the cross.” “…when you put your trust in Christ, your bondage to the world and its overpowering lure is broken. You are a corpse to the world, and the world is a corpse to you”. “The world is no longer our treasure. It’s not the source of our life or our satisfaction or our joy. Christ is.”
God has not called Dan and I to the mission field (yet), He has called us to the ministry of adoption. We know that it will cost us something. Not simply the fees involved with adoption but the life long day in and day out. Our pastor has been doing a series on Nehemiah and one of the titles of his sermons was “Real Ministry Costs” His outline went like this:
Nehemiah 5:14-19
1. Real ministry will often cost you certain freedoms and rights in order to best serve others for the glory of God (14-17, 17-18)
2. Real ministry will cost you time, energy, effort and other potentially beneficial opportunities in order to devote yourself fully to the work God has for you. (16)
3. Real ministry will cost you family and personal time (17)
4. Real ministry will require you to generously and graciously give of yourself and your own resources in order to meet the needs of others for the glory of God (18)
5. Real ministry that costs you your rights, time, energy, the loss of beneficial opportunities, family and personal time, as well as your own personal resources will be remembered by God (19 with 1 Cor 15:5 &32)

Sometimes we think “We have it so good with only one, what are we thinking?” but then I remember the burden God put in our hearts and we don’t want to miss the blessing. I don’t want to miss the laughter and noise. I don’t want to miss those sweet and tender words coming from my Lord and Savior “Well done, good and faithful servant.” I want to “Live my life well for Christ.”
As we pursue adoption the reasons why we initially started get muddy as God hones us and reveals more of Himself in our lives. Actually I am avoiding the admission of my initial reason of having a playmate (or another ear) for our daughter (who needs two mouths as my brother in law put it “One for eatin’ and one for talkin’”). But God has taken us way beyond that initial motivator of a playmate, beyond saving a child, beyond expanding our family and beyond a multi-generational perspective, Now we simply ask, “Lord, show us what you have for us. Bring us the children that will build us further into your likeness, that we might endure, through your grace and mercy as we walk with you and not only pick up the cross daily but live with you ON that cross.”