Rediscover the Bible for Life

“Numbering Our Days”

By Dennis Lee

We need to reassess life, that is, we need to life our lives intentionally given the fact that we only have so many days to live before eternity sets in.

This reality drove King David.

“Show me, O Lord, my life’s end and the number of my days; let me know how fleeting is my life.” (Psalm. 39:4 NIV)

To reassess our lives we need to ask, “Am I doing the most important thing?”

Why wait for your days to be numbered by someone or something else; instead start doing what you should be doing, or what is the most important thing?

We need to get our lives refocused, because we only have one go around in life. There are no mulligans or do-overs. Once it’s done, it’s done. Once this life is over, it’s over, and either heaven or hell waits.

King David understood how fleeting life is. He said, “My life is no longer than the width of my hand. An entire lifetime is just a moment to you; human existence is but a breath.” (Psalm. 39:5 NLT)

The Apostle James said that life is like that, here one moment and gone the next, that life is like a puff of vaporized water. Poof, and its gone!

David understood he could die at any time, so he asked God to help him understand how to live life under a death sentence.

Knowing that our days are numbered, will we reassess our lives and change how we live? Rather than waiting until we hear the words, “You only have a week, a month, or a year left to live,” we should seize the time we have for what’s truly important.

In Psalm 90 Moses said life is like a whisper, or a sigh. With this knowledge Moses asked God to tell him how to live his life accordingly. Moses asked God to give him the wisdom to know how to his live life knowing that some day he was going to die.

Moses prayed, “Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” (Psalm. 90:12: NIV)

If I could paraphrase, “Lord, give me the wisdom and insight to know not when I’m going to die, but how I am to live in light of my mortality and in light of my eternity?”

So why wait for someone or something else to number our days for you? Instead let’s live life according to God’s ways and no longer our own.

This involves a choice and the initiative to live life for God and for His kingdom to come and His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, Matthew 6:10.

Let’s ask God now to help us number our days, that is, to give us the wisdom on how we’re to live life understanding that one day we’ll die.

And when we pray this, those things that we thought were important, such as possessions, power, prestige, and pleasures will fall in their importance, and the things of God, that is, kingdom of God stuff, will be the most important.

Dennis Lee is the senior pastor of Living Waters Fellowship in Mesquite, Nevada.