Random
Can You Lengthen Your Life Or Are Your Days Pre-determined By God?
I have often heard people say: “when it is your time to go, it is your time to go.” The idea is that God has established a “death date” for everyone and there is nothing you can do about it.
There are some things that are clearly true including:
- Life is a gift from God. He does not owe anyone anything. If He takes us home today, that is his prerogative. If He allows us to live today, we should be consciously grateful.
- Regardless to the answer to this question, God does not owe us an explanation (though he voluntarily gives us insight in the Bible).
- God has an “ideal” time for when we are to die (he explains Peter’s “death plan” to him in John 21).
- God knows when and how we will die.
- There is nothing we can do to outlive the days that God gives us.
These truths can lead us to wrongly assume that what we do on this earth does not matter. For example, some people think that smoking cigarettes will do them no harm because “God is going to take me home when he chooses whether I smoke or not.” This line of thinking often says, “I know people who never smoked and died young, and I know people who smoke who lived to be 99 years of age. Clearly, it is God, not smoking that determines the length of my days.”
I agree that there is nothing we can do to extend our life past the time when God’s purpose for us is accomplished. But it is important to recognize that we can do things that cause us to die before our purpose is fully accomplished.
Proverbs 4:10 — Dear friend, take my advice; it will add years to your life. Wisdom is speaking here so the message is that wisdom will add years to your life.
1 Samuel 2: 32-34 — Everyone else in your family will die before their time. “Before their time” indicates that God did have in mind a specific time for these people to die. But he makes it clear they are going to die before their “time.” And the reason was because they were living in continuous disobedience to God’s plan for their life.
This subject is a highly debated subject. Calvinists and Armenians have argued over this for years. I do not claim to have all the answers, but it seems to me that:
- God has an “ideal” time for us to die.
- We can die before this “ideal” time by making unwise decisions.
2 Bottom Line Conclusions
- If you are “madly” in love with Jesus, you will not worry about this at all. Like the Apostle Paul said in Philippians 1:21, to live is Christ and to die is gain. Paul learned to be content either way…if he died he would be with Christ and if he lived Christ would be with him!
- I don’t want to be obsessed with how I die. Rather, I want to fulfill God’s plan for my life while I am alive! Acts 13:36 says For when David had served God’s purpose in his own generation, he fell asleep (he died). I pray that like David, I will fulfill God’s purpose in my generation…and then die. I can’t stand the thought of failing to fulfill God’s purpose for my life! “Lord, please help me not to waste this life. I want to fulfill the purpose you created me for completely!”
