Don't Waste Your Life

 Author: John Piper (2007)

"God created us to live with a single passion to joyfully display his supreme excellence in all the spheres of life.

The wasted life is the life without this passion.

God calls us to pray and think and dream and plan and work not to be made much of, but to make much of him in every part of our lives."

How to apply this passion in secular works?

1. We can make much of God in our secular job through the fellowship that we enjoy with him throughout the day in all our work. We work with God, by breathing continual thanks to Him and taking God's promises to work.
2. We make much of Christ in our secular work by the joyful, trusting, God-exalting design of our creativity and industry. God created us for work so that by consciously relying on His power and consciously shaping the world after His excellence, we might be satisfied in Him, and He might be glorified in us. 
3. We make much of Christ in our secular work when it confirms and enhances the portrait of Christ’s glory that people hear in the spoken gospel. By having such high standards of excellence and such integrity and such manifest goodwill that we put no obstacles in the way of the gospel but rather call attention to the all-satisfying beauty of Christ.
4. We make much of Christ in our secular work by earning enough money to keep us from depending on others, while focusing on the helpfulness of our work rather than financial rewards. “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you” (John 6: 27).
5. We make much of Christ in our secular work by earning money with the desire to use our money to make others glad in God. Work to have to give.
6. We make much of Christ in our secular work by treating the web of relationships it creates as a gift of God to be loved by sharing the gospel and by practical deeds of help. “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Rom. 10: 17).