I’ve Already Wasted My Life — Now What?
00:00:00.000 | A listener named Bruce writes in, "Dear Pastor John, I haven't read your book, Don't
00:00:09.160 | Waste Your Life. The title is convicting enough. The fact is that I have already wasted it,
00:00:14.440 | or at least it feels that way. For decades, I've tried a variety of different careers.
00:00:19.080 | None of them worked. I tried starting my own business for over 20 years while my wife worked.
00:00:24.160 | I earned a PhD, moved to a country where I didn't speak the language for my wife's
00:00:28.480 | business, and I had a breakdown. Several years later, my wife and I separated. I'm now 64.
00:00:34.320 | I live in a small mobile home, and I do work that any 18-year-old could do. Those are my
00:00:39.320 | boss's words. The company is good to me. My boss is a Christian, and I can earn a living.
00:00:44.440 | But each day feels like nothing more than an exercise in waking up in the morning, getting
00:00:48.180 | through the day, and going to bed at night." What advice can you give to someone who has
00:00:52.720 | already wasted his life? Bruce, as I paused to pray over this question
00:01:01.040 | when I first heard it, I believe the Lord brought five things to my mind for you that
00:01:10.960 | I hope will be of encouragement. Of course, I don't know you, and I don't even know
00:01:17.280 | if you're a Christian. But I have written and done many podcasts on the dynamics of
00:01:28.600 | the spiritual life, which maybe you do or you don't have. So I'm just going to assume
00:01:36.080 | the best, okay? I'm going to assume you're a Christian and that you have really struggled
00:01:43.700 | to be a Christian over these years. So that's my big assumption. Now, here are my five gifts.
00:01:50.880 | One, there have been evidences of grace in your life over the past decades. There have
00:01:59.380 | been. And these are important for three reasons, these evidences of grace. One is that they
00:02:07.760 | really are evidences that you belong to Jesus. They are the sorts of things you wouldn't
00:02:12.640 | have done if you weren't a Christian, if you were a merely natural man rather than
00:02:17.240 | spiritual indwelt by the Holy Spirit. Second, they will be acknowledged by the Lord on the
00:02:23.520 | last day, these evidences of grace, to your joy. And third, as pebbles dropped in the
00:02:32.120 | pond of history, they didn't fall in vain. God turned every one of those evidences of
00:02:39.880 | grace in your life. He turned every one of them. And I would even add your failures for
00:02:46.120 | his own wise purposes. All of that to say, beware of overstating the waste of the past.
00:02:55.520 | You might find yourself sounding humble, but in fact dishonoring grace.
00:03:01.560 | And the thief on the cross wasted his entire life, except for the last few hours. He repented,
00:03:14.000 | and Christ promised him that in a few hours he would be with him in paradise. This thief
00:03:20.080 | will face a judgment according to works, like all of us. And the only good works that he
00:03:28.720 | will have to offer will be the good works of the last three hours, or however many it
00:03:34.720 | was, on the cross, the time between his conversion and his death. Those good works would include,
00:03:45.400 | for example, the rebuke that he gave to the other thief. "We deserve this. He doesn't.
00:03:50.880 | Why don't you wake up? That's a good work. That's a good work. That's a beautiful
00:03:56.440 | act." In other words, there will not be very many works in this man's life to commend.
00:04:04.480 | Everything he did up to that point was sin because he didn't do it from faith, Romans
00:04:08.760 | 14, 23. But those few, this handful of works that he did on the cross before he died will
00:04:18.880 | be enough to give evidence that he was born again and welcome.
00:04:24.840 | Now the reason I mention that for you is not because any of us would want to be content
00:04:29.920 | with a handful of good deeds, but that you are 64 years old. Perhaps you have, if you're
00:04:39.080 | average, 15 years of life in front of you. And if my math is correct, you may have 75,000
00:04:47.400 | more hours to do good deeds than the thief on the cross did. Now that's absolutely
00:04:52.840 | stunning. In other words, there is a huge segment of your life in front of you. And
00:04:59.960 | I don't say huge compared to 64. I know it's small compared to 64. I say huge compared
00:05:06.400 | to three hours on the cross or millions of people, millions upon millions of people have
00:05:15.080 | less life to live than you do. It is incalculable what can be achieved for Jesus in 15 years.
00:05:22.800 | Jesus served publicly for three years. So don't waste the rest of your life by fretting
00:05:34.680 | over the past.
00:05:37.280 | Third, God has a new dream for you that is not wasteful. Remember what the apostle Paul
00:05:44.680 | said in Philippians 3, "Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what
00:05:49.520 | lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ
00:05:54.320 | Jesus." Surely the reason he said, "Forgetting what lies behind," is because the past
00:06:02.720 | regularly functions for us as a ball and chain around our feet, either because we failed
00:06:10.480 | and we feel hopeless or because we succeeded and feel proud. Better to forget the past
00:06:16.960 | in that way and dream a new dream.
00:06:20.400 | Fourth, in dreaming your new dream for your life, keep in front of you this truth. How
00:06:29.000 | you do what you do is vastly more important in the eyes of God than what you do. I understand.
00:06:38.040 | I mean, I think I can understand that having a PhD and doing what any 18-year-old can do
00:06:45.280 | probably feels like bad stewardship or failure. But remember, there are thousands of people
00:06:53.880 | with PhDs working in universities and displeasing the Lord God Almighty more than millions of
00:07:00.160 | teenagers who are walking by the Holy Spirit. It is not where you work or what you do that
00:07:07.000 | pleases the Lord. It is whether you live by the Spirit, whether you walk by faith, whether
00:07:13.760 | you pursue holiness, whether you love people, whether you grow in grace, whether Christ
00:07:20.080 | is more precious to you than anything.
00:07:22.880 | So Bruce, when I say, "Dream a new dream," I don't know whether the Lord means for you
00:07:28.920 | to have a new job, and I don't care very much. Sorry. I care enormously that you do what
00:07:39.640 | your hand finds to do in the name of the Lord Jesus, in love for people, for the glory of
00:07:46.440 | God flat out for 15 years. That's what I care about.
00:07:51.720 | And finally, number five, Bruce, gather around you a few friends who love Christ and pour
00:08:00.560 | out your heart to them about your sense of failure and ask them to join you in praying
00:08:08.640 | earnestly and expectantly that God will open a new chapter of usefulness for you, for joy,
00:08:18.560 | for worship, a new humility that's willing to acknowledge, like you do, all the failures
00:08:24.120 | of the past, a simplicity in the present, and a blood-bought hope for the future.
00:08:30.800 | So God bless you, Bruce. I will be eager to hear, if I live long enough, how God has made
00:08:38.600 | your last chapter the best. I'm surely at 70 praying mine will be.
00:08:45.200 | Those are wise and helpful words. Thank you, Pastor John. And Bruce, that was an excellent
00:08:48.640 | humble question that really presses into a reality that a lot of listeners face in different
00:08:53.000 | ways. And if you're struggling with a dilemma in your life or if you're having a hard time
00:08:57.020 | dealing with regret, share your struggle with us and see that you're not alone. Email me
00:09:02.660 | your question and askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:09:05.920 | Well, sometimes the greatest questions on this podcast are simple, like the three-word
00:09:10.840 | question on the table tomorrow. What is worship? Pastor John and I will return tomorrow. I'm
00:09:16.960 | your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.
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