Prologue
All my life, I've loved machines that are fast, loud, even dangerous. That's just the way I am. Whether it's flying an airplane, riding the wind on a dirt bike, four-wheeling through the Colorado mountains, or cruising in my old pickup through the North Carolina countryside, I love it! What I don't love are roller coasters or carnival Ferris wheels, especially when they start down. I'd much rather be in the cockpit twenty thousand feet up in the clouds than sitting in a chair forty feet above the ground with someone else at the controls.
Maybe that is why, as a young man, I was so reluctant to surrender my life to God. I thought Christianity would be boring, that it would mean living by other people's dull rules, that it would be, in a sense, a living death. I wanted to be in complete control. I wanted to live hard, fast, and free, to experience life on the edge.
And for a while, I did. I witnessed firsthand what it was like to hear bullets whizzing past my head and artillery exploding in the distance. I crossed closely guarded borders and travelled over perilous and exotic terrain.
But eventually the excitement proved to be nothing more than a temporary high. I soon realized that there wasn't enough adventure in the entire world to satisfy my thirsty spirit. No matter how thrilling the day, when my head hit the pillow at night I was overcome by a nagging emptiness—a dark void.
I began to discover what King Solomon lamented in the book of Ecclesiastes: "I denied myself nothing my eyes desired; I refused my heart no pleasure. . . . Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had one and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; . . . So I hated life. . . . All of it is meaningless" (2:10-11,17 NIV).
Acknowledgement:
"Live Fast, Die Young"
This is the attitude for many of the youth and even some adults. They chase after the wind, seeking adventure and excitement in their life, but end up with empty hands. They are chasing after something that they'll be never satisfied with. The things like fame, honour, and fortune are all vanity and meaningless because they will be taken away when we die. We were brought into this world naked, and we will leave this world the same way—from dust to dust.
Are You Living For Christ Or For Vanity?
King Solomon said, "All is vanity" (ESV).
Ecclesiastes 8:5-9
5 He who keeps his command will experience nothing harmful;
And a wise man’s heart discerns both time and judgment,
6 Because, for every matter there is a time and judgment,
Though the misery of man increases greatly.
7 For he does not know what will happen;
So who can tell him when it will occur?
8 No one has power over the spirit to retain the spirit,
And no one has power in the day of death.
There is no release from that war,
And wickedness will not deliver those who are given to it.
9 All this I have seen, and applied my heart to every work that is done under the sun: There is a time in which one man rules over another to his own hurt.
There is no end in chasing after pleasures of the body. It is a never ending race.
Ecclesiastes 12:11-12
11 The words of the wise are like goads, and like nails firmly fixed are the collected sayings; they are 12 My son, beware of anything beyond these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
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