Today's question comes to us from a listener named Scott. "Pastor John, based on recent medical diagnoses and due to my life circumstances, the likelihood that I will reach middle age are very slim. I'm in my late 20s. My brother died at age 18. This prospect has caused me to go through battles of trusting God and fighting off depression.

I understand God is sovereign and I have no right to ask why He's made me this way. I look forward to being made perfect, but until then, how can I live out the rest of my life in a courageous manner that is honoring to Him? How do I prevent the prospect of a premature death from turning me jaded toward our sovereign Lord?" My response to Scott's question is a kind of quiet reverence.

Whenever I am in the presence of someone - and as a pastor I've been in the presence of many - who has been told that their life may be cut short, I feel as though I'm on sacred ground. Yes. As if eternity had penetrated that moment and that place.

So Scott, please know that I want to respond to your questions with a great sense of the weightiness of the reality that you lost a brother at 18, and that your own life could well be cut short, not even to reach midlife. So I don't take it lightly. However, one of the first things I want to do is gently push back on your statement that you have no right to ask God why He made you this way.

I realize that's a direct quote from Romans 9:20. You are a Bible guy. I can tell that you've read this text. Here's what it says. "Who are you, O man, to answer back to God? So what is molded, say to the molder, 'Why have you made me like this?'" That's a quote from our friend.

"Has the potter no right over the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable?" So Scott is inferring, "Well, I better keep my mouth shut, because Paul scolds people who ask, 'Why have you made me thus?'" However, I think what Paul is rejecting here is not a humble request for understanding accompanied by a willingness to accept God's answer, but rather a question that is really an objection—"Why have you made me this way?"—along with a proud unwillingness to accept God's answer.

So my guess is that in these coming years, for Scott, God is going to give you some very precious answers to the question, "Why?" It's not wrong. It is not wrong to humbly ask God for those answers and accompany that request with a willingness to say yes to His answer.

Now, you express two beautiful longings in your question. Number one, you want to live the rest of your life in a way that honors the Lord, you said. Number two, you don't want to become jaded toward the Lord in His sovereignty in your life. It is a wonderful thing that God's Word speaks directly to both of those longings that you expressed—the issues of honoring the Lord in the face of death and the issue of not being jaded in the face of death.

And the first way God speaks to the honoring piece is in Philippians 1:20. I'm sure you know this, but let's all just wonderfully be reminded of how Christ speaks concerning the honoring of Christ in Paul's mouth here. "It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not at all be ashamed, but with full courage now as always, Christ will be honored." That's your longing.

That was Paul's exact longing in exactly your situation. "Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death." Now, how? How does he pursue that? "For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me.

Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard-pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better." So Paul says that Christ will be honored in his approaching death if he can see and savor Christ as more precious than life.

It's no accident that some of the greatest Christians, as they approach the end of their lives, shift all their focus onto seeing and savoring the glories of Christ in his Scriptures. In fact, John Owen, when he knew he was dying, he'd spent the last days writing on the glories of Christ.

Secondly, with regard to your longing that you not become jaded at the sovereignty of God, it is remarkable that the very opposite of becoming jaded toward the Lord is blessing the Lord, right? I mean, I think those are the opposite. I'm becoming jaded and bitter toward the Lord, or I'm blessing the name of the Lord.

And that's exactly how Job responded in the face of the death of all ten of his children. Their lives were cut short right in his face, and I know that almost everybody listening to this would say, "I would rather die than all my ten children die." Of course we would.

Then Job arose and tore his robe—he tore his robe, this wasn't small—shaved his head, fell on the ground, and worshipped and said, "Naked I came from my mother's womb, naked shall I return. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed," not jaded, "Blessed be the name of the Lord," Job 1, 20 and 21.

Now just pause and let that sink in, all of us. "Blessed, blessed be the name of the Lord," not cursed be the name of the Lord, not jaded be the name of the Lord, "Blessed, praised, spoken well of, reverenced." So how do we experience the Lord as blessed, the name of the Lord as blessed, blessed, well spoken of, reverenced, praised, rather than being jaded in the face of decline and death, even if it's cut short?

Paul put it like this in 2 Corinthians 4, 16, "So we do not lose heart." There's another statement about the opposite of being jaded. We do not lose heart. And he's just speaking right into Scott's situation. Paul knows that you can lose heart. People can lose heart. "I've just had enough of this.

I've lost it. I can't get my heart back anymore. I'm a hard, jaded person." Paul says, "No, no, no. Let's not go there. We do not lose heart. So our outer self is wasting away. Our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison as we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen.

For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal." So perhaps, Scott, a story may help as I end this, help focus your and our minds in a helpful way. Marshall Shelley. I know Marshall Shelley personally from way back. I haven't talked to him for a long time.

He teaches at Denver Seminary. He's, I think, about my age, a little older, maybe one or two years older. He lost a child in 1991, and he wrote about it in an article published in Christianity Today way back then called "Two Minutes to Eternity." Here's what he said. He, his son, he named him Toby, he entered the world of light at 8.20 p.m., November 22, 1991, and he departed, the doctor said, at 8.22.

Why did God create a child? This is still Marshall talking. Why did God create a child to live two minutes? And he says, "He didn't. He didn't create Toby to live two minutes or Mandy to live two years. He didn't create me to live 40 years or whatever number he may choose.

God created Toby for eternity. He created each of us for eternity, where we may be surprised to find our true calling, which always seemed just out of reach here on earth." That's the end of the quote from Marshall. In fact, listen to the way Paul describes that life to come.

First Timothy 6.19, "Store up for yourselves a good foundation for the future so that you may take hold of that which is truly life." In other words, the life to come is not a postscript to this true life. Rather, this life is prelude to real life. That's what he's saying in that phrase, "truly life." Paul describes in the coming ages, when God shows the immeasurable riches of his grace and kindness toward us in Christ Jesus, that's when we will find true life.

Ephesians 2.7, "It will take age upon age upon age upon age of ages for God to show all his kindness to us because it is immeasurable," Paul says. This is the mindset of Christians. That's what we've got to have, me, Scott, all of us. I've been so helped by stories like that and by the apostle Paul.

I pray, Scott, you will feel this amazing immeasurableness of the kindness that is about to be poured out on you forever. That's an incredible story and a very good word for all of us, Pastor John. We're so short-sighted in this life. Thank you for your words. Thank you for listening to this podcast as well.

Over at our online home, you can explore all of our episodes in our archive of now about 1300 episodes to date. There you can see a list of our most popular episodes, read full transcripts and submit questions you might be wrestling with yourself. For all of that, go to desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.

We are going to return on Monday. Until then, have a great weekend, enjoying the gift that is this day, a gift from God. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you on Monday. 1. Desiring God 1. Desiring God 2. Desiring God