Consider now: what is your life?

 “Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.”- James 4:14

Leonard Ravenhill once said: “you will never meet a more challenging question than this: “what is your life?”.   Not what is life, or what are you doing with your life, but what is your life?”

Life, we spend most of our time, money, and energy to preserve life.  Yet with all our efforts to hold onto it, our life is a vapor.  Despite our best efforts it will slowly seep through our fingertips until it’s gone.  While existence is evidence of life, we find in this life something deeper than just existing.  There is more to life than sleeping, eating, and breathing.  The willful animation of ourselves to move from one place to the next can hardly quantify this precious gift we call “life”.  With this in mind take to heart the Apostle James’s searching question: what is your life?  In our early years we have no idea how short life is.  Our days are spent wishing we were older.  Our adolescent years come, and we are too ignorant to be mindful of the gift of life.  As middle-age sneaks up on us, we are met with the harsh reality that we are headed to the grave, as our bodies begin to prove it so.  Finally, in the last season of life the evidence becomes too overwhelming to ignore, and everything you know begins to slowly fade away as the grave summons you.  That final day will come to us all and we will leave behind every possession and every memory that is tied to it.  Our bodies will lay in a grave, and our life summed up in an afternoon eulogy as we have stepped off into the void of eternity.  What remains of you after death but your prayers, words, actions, and immortal soul?  The things which outlive us are often the very things we ignore the most.  What security do you have that you're ready to meet eternity?  Are you confident of a hope beyond the grave?  For, what is your life?  

All our hope must be in Christ.  This hope is evidenced by refusing to live for ourselves and focusing on Christ.  Our Savior.  The scripture says that “we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ”.  We will meet Jesus here, or there, but we will meet Him.  We will meet Jesus as the intercessor, or judge, but we will meet Him.  We will see Jesus as an arbitrator or adjudicator, but we will all see Him.  He is Lord, and when we arrive at judgment will we hear?  “Well done, thy good and faithful servant” or “depart from me, ye that work iniquity.”  How you live here will determine where you live forever.  Consider now: what is your life?