To Encourage You

2 Corinthians 11:24-28 “Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches.”

I had an interesting conversation with a friend the other night on the topic of “bucket lists.”  Do you have one?  Lots of people do.  Well, our conversation had to do with what a bucket list should look like for a Christian – or if a Christian should even have one.  Specifically, when we look at examples of people in the Scriptures whose lives were totally and completely committed to Jesus Christ, is a “bucket list” something that they would have said was important to them? 

Well, if we look at someone like the apostle Paul, I think the answer would be, “I strongly doubt it.”  You see, whatever Paul’s goals in life might have been before he was saved, they all went out the window the moment he met Christ and gave his life to Him.  His self-centered life was uprooted at that moment, as we see in his following words that are recorded for us Philippians 3: “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him.” Whatever his life was all about before He gave his heart to Jesus, now he was 100% focused on the goal “that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and may share His sufferings, becoming like Him in his death.” 

Could Paul have ever imagined that the things he recounts about his life as a Christian in the passage above from 2 Corinthians 11 would have been on his “bucket list” as he followed his Lord? Would he have ever imagined that he would end up in a Roman prison because of his faith, to be beheaded in the end simply because he was a follower of Christ? 

As I think about Paul and others like him, it causes me to hit the pause button on the idea of a personal “bucket list.”  You see, a bucket list is all about what I want to do before I die.  But for what purpose?  If in my pursuit of the places I want to visit and the things I want to do, the places the One I say is my Lord wants me to visit and the things my Lord may want me to do might take second place. But is that what I really want? Is that what my deepest longings are?  Rather, doesn’t it seem that my goal as a believer should be to seek my Lord each and every day so that it is His “bucket list” for me that is the thing I pursue above all else. 

As my friend mentioned during our discussion, we who know Christ will reign with Him for 1,000 years during His millennial reign on earth (Revelation 20:1-6) and in the new heaven and new earth forever.  Surely there will be plenty of time to take care of any bucket list then, at that time when we who know Christ will inherit the earth (Matthew 5:5) as well as everything else in the universe as “heirs of God and fellow-heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:17).