As Though It Were Your Last

When someone asked the great evangelist Dwight L. Moody how he would spend the day if he knew it was his last one, he said he wouldn’t do anything differently than he did every day.

That is the way we all should live as Christians.

We can find a lot in the Bible about the Lord’s return. In the 260 chapters in the New Testament, Christ’s return is mentioned no less than 318 times. Statistically, one out of every twenty-five verses in the Bible mentions the return of Jesus Christ.

For the sake of a point, let’s say we knew that Jesus Christ was returning at 3:00 tomorrow afternoon. I’m sure we would all look like saints at 2:45. We’d be wearing our Sunday morning smiles with our come-quickly-Jesus attitudes.

Of course, we know this isn’t possible, because no one knows the day or the hour. Jesus said of His return, “However, no one knows the day or hour when these things will happen, not even the angels in heaven or the Son himself. Only the Father knows” (Matthew 24:36 NLT).

But the fact is that we ought to live this way every day. We have never been closer to the Lord’s return than we are right now.

The Bible says, “But you must not forget this one thing, dear friends: A day is like a thousand years to the Lord, and a thousand years is like a day. The Lord isn’t really being slow about his promise, as some people think. No, he is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent” (2 Peter 3:8–9 NLT).

We should live every day as though it were the day Christ is coming back. We should live every day as though it were our last.