Live Like You Were Dyin'

As I'm preparing for Sunday's sermon, we're talking about potential and what God might do in us and through us as we allow Him to. But as a backdrop, this week began with a funeral for someone close to me. Funerals always lead me to the thoughts about what type of legacy I would leave. The conversations of living the dream and leaving a legacy are very similar to each other because, as I fulfill God's purpose for my life, I will leave that legacy.

In this particular case, the funeral was for someone who had been given a year to live and so the question of what would I do differently if I was given a year to live was a very real issue. As we stood by the graveside, the Tim McGraw song "Live Like You Were Dyin'" was referenced with the question, "If you knew you had one year to live, what would you do differently?"The bottom-line message for the funeral was this: she was given a year to live and she changed nothing about herself in that year. She remained the woman she always had been. She didn't try to be remembered for anything over that year other than to be remembered for the faithful life centered around the cross of Christ.

As we talk about dreams and fulfilling our potential, it is easy to become pie-in-the-sky and misty-eyed as we look to a utopian future, filled with every good thing we've ever imagined. But the reality is that, even as we follow our God-given, Spirit-led, Christ-centered dream, we won't enter into that utopia until we enter glory with our Lord. Life will remain painful and we will still experience difficulty and loss. Our potential isn't met through striving for anything: God will accomplish what God will accomplish as we simply remain faithful to him and do the everyday stuff he gives us and trust him even through the pain and difficulty.
God has given us dreams and visions and passion and abilities for him to accomplish things that seem impossible. But, a the end of the day, he is the one who will accomplish them. All he asks of us is that we faithfully live our lives. That, if we are given a year to live, that we can hold our heads high, knowing that we are already doing the stuff so we don't need to change anything about ourselves. Basically, so that we can live like we were dyin'.

Tim McGraw, "Live Like You Were Dyin'"