Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"
A wise author has written: "Should we come to the close of life with our work undone, it would be an eternal loss" (The Ministry of Healing, p. 452).
Sober thought!
"AN eternal loss": it doesn't necessarily say a TOTAL eternal loss.
The apostle Paul can help us here. It is true that each of us has a life work that we are called to do, and if we come to our end of life with that work neglected, it will be a tragedy: it will be like planting a crop and reaping no harvest. "He who plants and he who waters are one, and each one will receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, you are God's building. ... If anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, [or] wood hay, straw, each one's work will become manifest: for the Day will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one's work, of what sort it is. If anyone's work which he has built on it endures, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire" (1 Cor. 3:8-15).
Do we have a right to say that if anyone's life work is a total loss, he can still be saved? Yes, says Paul; but he will be like someone in a forest fire--he will escape with only the clothes on his back; everything else just ashes.
What the Lord wants your life work to be only He can tell you; what we know for sure is that He wants you to be happy when you meet Him face to face. When we come up to the One who sits on the Great White Throne before "whose face the earth and the heaven [flee] away" (Rev. 20:11; yes we must "all appear before the judgment seat of Christ," 2 Cor. 5:10), we will see the cross of Christ looming high "above the throne." Yes, the cross is higher than the throne! It's something that even the Father bows to! In that moment, we will see our life as it should have been.
If you are still short of your death-bed, kneel and plead with Him to help you surrender to the "constraint" of that love (agape) of Christ. Don't try to "earn" a reward, but truly "believe" in Him so the fountain of living water may flow out of your empty heart to bless others (cf. John 7:37, 38).
--Robert J. Wieland
From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: November 17, 2007.
Copyright © 2014 by "Dial Daily Bread."
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