For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad (The Apostle Paul, 2 Corinthians 5:10, NIV).
I work harder and more efficiently when I’m up against a deadline. Deadlines are in fact wonderful things that help me to get in gear. This week I was challenged to think about the ultimate deadline, that day when I will stand before Jesus and give an account of what I’ve done with my life. Wow!, talk about accountability! For every moment, every dollar, every opportunity, and every relationship I will give an account to God.
How much time have I wasted in this life? How often have I put off important things? How often have I obsessed over trivialities while turning away from persons who need me? How many times have I chosen the path of least resistance when the hard path would have yielded far more fruit for eternity? These are tough questions for me to face; it seems like I’m in a perpetual state of repentance for wasting time.
Even the apparent good things I do are often done from motives mixed with self-interest. I’ll happily learn God’s ways of parenting if they help me keep my kids on track. I’ll eagerly embrace God’s principles of finance if they help me get out of debt and become a millionaire so I can be generous. Yet if my confession is only, “God, thanks to your Word, I lived a functional, affluent life in the suburbs.”, how will that fly at the judgment seat of Christ? Will I be confronted with the vital things I left undone because there was no self-interest to motivate me?
Consider the words to this hymn:
His Plan For Me (author unknown)
When I stand at the Judgment Seat of Christ
And He shows His plan for me,
The plan of my life as it might have been
Had He had His way – and I see
How I blocked Him here, and checked Him there,
And I would not yield my will,
Will there be grief in my Savior’s eyes,
Grief though He loves me still?
Would He have me rich and I stand there poor,
Stripped of all but His grace,
While memory runs like a hunted thing,
Down the paths I cannot retrace.
Lord, of the years that are left to me
I give them to Thy hand
Take me and break me and mold me,
To the pattern that Thou hast planned!
Today I choose to live for the glory of God with a view toward the judgment seat of Christ. I rejoice in God’s mercy and forgiveness and draw hope from the knowledge that, on that day, my impure motives and wasted moments will be burned away as chaff and only what was done for Christ will last!
