What I want to do before I die...

Yesterday I was catching up on some unread email and found a “Friends Survey” sent by a friend of mine. If you’ve had email very long, you know the kind of survey I am talking about. It’ll begin by asking your name and then ask questions about whether you’ve been certain places or have preferences like Coke vs. Pepsi, Disney vs. Warner Bros, etc. I typically just reply to the person who sent the email with my answers.

So, I began filling it out and came to the question, “What do you want to do before you die?” I thought about all of the lists of ‘somedays’ that people often put together. I have my list. Someday I’d like to see various places, museums, parts of the globe. I started to think about how important it is to me to see these places and it occurred to me that they are just places and things. The important things in life are the people around me, how I interact with them, and what legacy I leave. I’ve thought about this idea before but never in the context of “What I want to do before I die.” The only important thing one MUST do before he dies is to determine whether he believes that Jesus Christ’s death on the cross and subsequent resurrection from the dead do in fact pay the penalty for the sin of that individual. This is a critical decision because in the end, it determines where the individual spends eternity. So, having believed this, I determined that the thing I really want to do before I die is to leave a legacy of changed lives because of what I believe and how I live. All of my “somedays” may happen but they are, in fact, just a bonus!

So, here’s a passage from the Bible that really got me going on this topic. I hope that the time comes when I can truly say that I consider the surpassing worth of knowing Christ to be of greater value than anything else I could experience or obtain.

Philippians 3 (TNIV)

Further, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord! It is no trouble for me to write the same things to you again, and it is a safeguard for you. Watch out for those dogs, those evildoers, those mutilators of the flesh. For it is we who are the circumcision, we who serve God by his Spirit, who boast in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh— though I myself have reasons for such confidence.

If others think they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.

But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in [a] Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.

Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

All of us, then, who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. Only let us live up to what we have already attained.

Join together in following my example, brothers and sisters, and just as you have us as a model, keep your eyes on those who live as we do. For, as I have often told you before and now tell you again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.