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Don't Waste Your Life (Part 1) - John Piper
Don't Waste Your Life (Part 2) - John Piper
Don't Waste Your Life (Part 3) - John Piper
FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript
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Don't Waste Your Life
Day 1 of 3
Guest: John Piper
From the Series: Following the Call of Christ
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Bob: So why are you here? For that matter, why is anything here? Well, here is an answer from Dr. John Piper.
John: We need to help people see why the universe was created, and it wasn't created for people to become famous and for people to become powerful, it was created to display the worth and excellencies and beauty and wonders of God. And we are here to receive that excellency and reflect it out in our lives so that other people see it. It's all about God – from Him, through Him, and to Him are all things to Him be glory forever and ever.
Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Wednesday, July 26th. Our host is the president of FamilyLife, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. Understanding why we're here is the first step in not wasting our lives. Stay tuned.
And welcome to FamilyLife Today, thanks for joining us. I have a distinct memory of an event that took place when I was in high school. I was in an English class, and we were in a unit study on the subject of existentialism – "Existentialism and Man" – we were reading Camus and Sartre and the guy who wrote the story about being a cockroach – Kafka, Franz Kafka.
Dennis: This was in high school?
Bob: This was in high school, and Mrs. Venary [sp] was our English teacher, and Mrs. Venary said one day, she asked us, "What's most important in your life?" And I remember, we were going around the room and answering that question, and we got to me, and I don't remember what I said. If I had to guess today, I would probably have said, "One of the really important things in my life is music." I was in a band, I played guitar, I really liked music.
But by the time we got to one of my classmates who was about halfway through the group, she said, "Really, the most important thing in my life is my relationship with God." And I remember thinking, "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the right answer. I need to remember that next time." And then it dawned on me that if I didn't have that as the right answer when the question came around, it probably wasn't really the most important thing in my life, you know?
Dennis: Yeah, and I was thinking how I would have answered it – I'm sorry that God would not have been my answer, either – athletics would have been. And I think whether you're in high school and how you would have answered it then or where you are today, the question is still a good question, and we have someone today with us on FamilyLife Today who I think is going to help you – well, maybe either realign your spiritual tires or maybe answer the question in the right way for the first time.
John Piper joins us on FamilyLife Today. John, welcome to FamilyLife Today.
John: Thank you, I'm glad to be here.
Dennis: John is the pastor of preaching at Bethlehem Baptist Church where he has served since 1980. He and his wife, Noelle, have four sons and a daughter, live in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and he's a prolific writer. And, you know, Bob, it's not often that books come to our attention here at FamilyLife Today through our wives, but this one did. Back last Christmas Barbara came to me, and she said, "You know, there is one book I want to give our kids for Christmas." I said, "Oh, really? Who is it by?" She said, "John Piper." And I immediately thought of some of the books that I've had the privilege of reading, browsing my way through, "Desiring God," among others, and she said, "It's a new book called "Don't Waste Your Life." And I thought, "Now, that's a good title." Because we have a generation of people, I believe, who are really not getting around to the question you asked, Bob – what is most important in your life.
John, you tell a story about a couple who had retired on the coast of Florida.
John: Yeah, I got the story from "Reader's Digest."
Bob: That's okay, Ronald Reagan got a lot of his stories from "Reader's Digest," too. There's nothing wrong with that.
John: And it was written by them, so it's not told about them, and I won't give any names, but they were marveling that at, I think, age 51 and 52 or something like that, they were able to retire early, go to Florida, and the peak of their excitement about this stage in their life was that they could play softball and collect shells. And I just read that and thought, "You've got to be kidding?"
Dennis: Now, we're talking about the ultimate experience in their lives?
John: Evidently. I mean, I'm thinking in the last chapter of my life, I am mainly preparing to meet the judge of the universe and give an account with my little vaporous life on this earth. He is not going to ask, "Can I see your shell collection?"
Bob: Who won the softball game? It's not going to matter, is it?
John: It's not. And so it became a kind of paradigm story for me of the American way because tragically the AARP and most people giving counsel on what to do with your latter years are telling you to go play them away on a golf course somewhere or something, and I'm thinking, "That is not the way I want to spend my life at all let alone my last few years in the months just preceding seeing the king of the universe."
Bob: &nb...
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