¹² Anyone who builds on that foundation may use a variety of materials—gold, silver, jewels, wood, hay, or straw. ¹³ But on the judgment day, fire will reveal what kind of work each builder has done. The fire will show if a person’s work has any value. ¹⁴ If the work survives, that builder will receive a reward. ¹⁵ But if the work is burned up, the builder will suffer great loss. The builder will be saved, but like someone barely escaping through a wall of flames.    -I Cor. 3:12-15

What are we here for? What will the legacy we leave here on earth be? Does what we do actually matter? What will God think of our lives? What that we did will actually matter in eternity? I’ve been thinking about  what gets rewarded in Heaven, because after all, everything we did with our lives is going to be thrown in the fire, and all that will remain after is what we did for God.

So what do we actually get rewarded for? Well…

• We won’t be rewarded for how much money we earned or saved.

• We won’t be rewarded for how popular we were, how many followers we had on Twitter, or how many Facebook friends we have.

• We won’t be rewarded for how good we were at a certain sport or hobby.

• We won’t be rewarded for what our title was.

• We won’t be rewarded for how good we were and what we did not do that was bad.

We will be rewarded for one thing: Did we make a difference for Christ?

Did we lead people to Him? Did we do what He called us to do? Did we put Him first in our lives? Did we put Him first in our family? In our relationships? In our finances?

Matthew 6:33 says to seek FIRST the Kingdom of God. If we’re doing that in every area of our lives, we’ll make a difference for Him in every area of our lives. The end result: Our lives will count for something. Something so much bigger than anything we could pursue and spend our lives on otherwise.

What are you spending your life on? Is it all just going to burn up? Or will it make a difference for eternity.

Thoughts?

¹⁰ Obviously, I’m not trying to win the approval of people, but of God. If pleasing people were my goal, I would not be Christ’s servant.                                                                                                       Galatians 1:10

It’s hard to go through life not wanting people to like you, to be impressed by you, or even wanting others to envy you. But in reality, not that many people are thinking about you as much as you think they are anyway. My friend Zack Blair taught me this truth when I was asking him his opinion about what I thought others thought about a decision I was making and he said, “Bubba, people don’t wake up every morning thinking about you.” Ouch! Haha! But it’s true!

I’ve heard it said that we spend the majority of our lives trying to impress people we don’t even like and in this case, that don’t even really think about us as much as we think they do.

I was thinking along these lines and the question came up, “What if I lived and died, and nobody remembered me?” Because in reality – regardless of what I do in life, 50 years after I die, nobody is going to remember me.

My conclusion: What I do in life will matter in eternity. Jesus said to Peter that he should have one focus in life if he loved Him: “Feed His Sheep.“  I believe that is God’s call on all of our lives – to point people to Him. That’s it. If that becomes our focus in life – lifting people and pointing them to God -> we’ll be free from wanting to please and impress people and our focus will turn to pleasing God.

“What we do in life, echoes in eternity”

And while people here won’t remember me, there will be people in Heaven as a result of what I did while I was here. They will come up to me and you in Heaven and say, “Thank you for pointing me to Jesus, I’m here because of you.” I’d rather have 1 person tell me that I made a difference in their lives for eternity than 10,000 remember my name in 5 years.

Application? Lift people and point them to Him. Stop caring what people think of you. God will remember what you did for His Kingdom, and so will the people that are in Heaven because of your life – that is all that matters so do what God has called you to do and at the end of your life you’ll be able to say along with the apostle Paul - I’ve fought the good fight and finished my race and to the people I’ve touched, it’ll have made all the difference.