James 4:13-15. Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.” NKJV.
Psalms 90:12. So teach us to number our days, That we may present to You a heart of wisdom.
2 Corinthians 5:10. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.
Colossians 3:1-3. Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth. For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

At the centre of the short passage from James is a question that every believer in the Lord Jesus needs to answer. For what is your life? As we attempt to provide an answer to this all important question we must not delude ourselves or others. This is a very personal and direct question and it is a question that demands an answer from every human being. If we asked it of five people we might receive five different answers. However, the real answer to this question is provided by what we spend the greatest amount of our time doing and who most benefits from our activities and actions.

 “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. God has given every one of us a will to decide how we shall live our life. How easy it can be to simply weigh our choices, try to make good decisions and hope that they will receive God’s blessing. Yet the message of these verses is very clear. Our response to all our choices and decisions ought to be “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.”

‘So teach us to number our days’, That we may present to You a heart of wisdom. This verse from Psalm 90 emphasizes the importance of spending each day wisely so that we may render to God a heart made divinely wise through our daily choices and experiences. Every moment He gives us belongs to Him. In His divine plan He has provided each one of us with enough time to perform the good works that God ‘prepared beforehand that we should walk in them’. Ephesians 2:10.

Consider an example in which we are individually given thousands of pieces that belong to two different puzzles. It will be our choice which puzzle we work on. One puzzle will create a picture of a life spent in doing what we want, while the other will create a picture of a life devoted to doing what is well-pleasing to the Lord. We may through ignorance, complacency or neglect be found working on the wrong puzzle yet, at any time, we may choose to devote ourselves to the one that will change the course of our life. As the many pieces of the second puzzle are put in place, by finding and doing the will of God, there will at last emerge the likeness of Jesus.

For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ. On that awesome occasion the puzzle we have been working on will reveal not only our condition but it will provide the ultimate answer to the question posed in this article – ‘For what is your life’?

‘Therefore if you have been raised up with Christ, keep seeking the things above, where Christ is’. The verses from Colossians might seem to be encouraging us to separate ourselves entirely from all earthly considerations. Yet this cannot be the emphasis, for the life of Jesus on earth, while it was lived wholly in accordance with heaven’s perspective was, nevertheless, constantly devoted to earthly needs and events in accordance with His Father’s will. This will apply to our life here on earth also.

‘For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God’. These few words hold the key to the life that pleases God. When what we want is set aside entirely in favour of what the Lord Jesus wants, then our life on earth, though brief, will have been lived in the context of the will of heaven.

Surely there can be no greater reward at the judgment seat of Christ than to receive this great commendation ‘Well done, good and faithful slave. You were faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of many things; enter into the joy of your master.’ Matthew 25:21.

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