I Wasted Years. Here’s What I Know Now.
“It is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment.” — Hebrews 9:27
Some words whisper. These do not. They blast through the air like a bugle in a sleeping camp.
One life. One death. One judgment. No encore. No curtain call.
You will not live this stretch of years again. There is no looped track. No return ticket. The coin is in your hand now, and once spent, it is gone forever.
Even Jesus, whose life was measured in perfection, moved under the urgency of this truth. “I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day,” He said. “The night is coming when no one can work” (John 9:4).
The day is now.
One Life So Very Brief
Life does not just come once; it comes short.
The psalmist says seventy years is typical, eighty if strength allows. But take away the hours for sleeping, washing, eating, waiting at red lights, standing in lines, recovering from illness and your storehouse of days shrinks fast.
Church buildings outlast us. The stone walls of an 1835 chapel may still be standing, but the quarrymen who cut the rock, the carpenters who set the beams, and the worshipers who sang on opening day are long gone to dust.
One hundred years from now, most of our names will not be spoken aloud. The grass will have grown over us.
Every minute is a trust. Every hour is an investment. And each will be accounted for.
A Word to the Young
If you are young, you hold something the old can never get back. Strength. Energy. A God-given daring that makes you willing to risk for something worth dying for. That daring fades with age.
Jonathan Edwards ignited New England at twenty-five. Whitefield shook nations at twenty-one. Spurgeon filled London’s largest halls at seventeen. They did not wait for clarity or comfort. They stepped into the harness then and there.
There are tasks only the young can do. Some languages will only lodge in a mind still quick. Some terrains can only be crossed when the knees are still strong.
Do not carry into your later years the heavy ache of wasted time. Pull out the stops now.
False Ambitions
If life is one coin to spend, do not waste it on counterfeit dreams.
One of the most dangerous is the pursuit of comfort.
Jesus Christ said it plainly: “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth.” Comfort is a false friend. It dulls urgency, lulls you into false security, and will betray you in the end. You cannot take it with you, and it will fight you every step if you try to live for eternity.
If God has entrusted you with resources, they are not for hoarding while souls go unreached. Give up the small ambitions. Use everything…every possession, every gift, every breath…to bring honor to Christ.
Life’s Great Constraints
A lawyer once asked Jesus, “Which is the great commandment in the law?” The answer set the compass for every human life:
Love God.
Love your neighbor.
Love yourself.
To love God is to see Him as He is – beauty without blemish, truth without shadow, righteousness without stain and then to see what He has done. The Creator took on flesh. The Judge bore your guilt. The Lord of glory hung on a cross to reconcile you to Himself.
Love like that demands your soul, your life, your all.
To love your neighbor is to care enough to speak truth. Two hundred thousand people a day pass into eternity without Christ. If you had the cure for a deadly disease but kept it to yourself, no one could call you loving. Yet how often do we sit silent with the gospel?
To love yourself rightly is to live so that your life is not wasted. It is possible to be saved and still arrive in eternity empty-handed. Redemption is not the finish line; it is the starting gun.
A Misfit’s Journey
I know what it is to squander years.
Out of high school, I was adrift. I chose music at Southwest Missouri State, though I had no real gift for it. I dropped out. I worked construction and other hard labor jobs just to keep the lights on.
At twenty-seven, I bought my former employer’s business. It paid the bills but did not stir my heart. I thought wealth would make me whole. But without purpose, even a paycheck is hollow.
I was a misfit, carrying on as if there would be another life in which I could sort it all out.
At forty-two, God saved me. A few years later, He called me to ministry, and I resisted. My business had become my identity. But God would not leave me to small ambitions. I started theological studies, served in part-time pastorates, and step by step, He led me where I never thought I would go.
Now, in my mid-fifties, I pastor a small church in the Ozarks. I rise before dawn to open the Scriptures and write. I love the work. But I still feel the weight of wasted years.
That is why I write to other misfits…late bloomers, wanderers, those still waiting to begin. Do not think you have endless time. Do not imagine that “someday” will be easier. Your life is now.
Living for What Will Matter
In an old church I know, three doors bear three inscriptions: Over one: All that pleases is but for a moment. Over another: All that troubles us is but for a moment. Over the central door: That only is important which is eternal.
That is the measure of a life well spent.
Love God with all your heart. Love your neighbor enough to speak truth. Love yourself enough to live for what will matter when the earth is ashes and the sky rolls back like a scroll.
One life. One death. One judgment.
The bugle is sounding. The day is now.
And when your name is spoken for the last time on earth, may it still be known in heaven.
