Is it Profitable?

*Warning: This post may cause spiritual discomfort.

I have recently been reading the book 'Don't Waste Your Life' by John Piper. (If my grandparents are reading this, this book was a graduation present from you, and I aplogize that I haven't gotten it read sooner. However, I believe reading it now is divine timing)

To say that certain points in this book have been convicting is an understatement.

The past couple of days I cannot shake the question 'Is it profitable?' from my mind.

How much of my life do I spend on things that are unprofitable; things that have no true or lasting value and are utterly insignificant when it comes to eternity?

How often am I consumed by culture, media, and other distractions that take my focus off of God's Word or other activities that could have more meaning?

For example...television (I realize that I am stepping on toes, my own included). A quote taken from the book states...

"What is happening in America is that television is transforming all serious public business into junk....Television disdains exposition, which is serious, sequential, rational, and complex. It offers instead a mode of discourse in which everything is accessible, simplistic, concrete, and above all, entertaining. As a result, America is the world's first culture in jeopardy of amusing itself to death." Ouch.

I am not completely anti-television...but maybe I should be.

How much of life have I wasted by simply 'turning off my brain' in order to relax, instead of pursuing something to stimulate my thinking?

Television is not the only life-waster. There are many other pursuits that can suck me (and you) away from what is meaningful and eternal and significant.

So I come back to the question, 'Is it profitable?' My desire would be to look back on each day and see that the work I did, the conversations I held, the things I achieved, the entertainment I read or viewed were not a waste, but were of real, significant value. Profitable.

What things are sucking the life out of our lives? What can we do to change this?

"Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world. And this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave. But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever." 1 John 2:15-17

Follow Me

He said to them, 'Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel's will save it.
For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?'" Mark 8:34b-36

These verses have been weighing heavily on my mind today.