A year left to live?

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A question was asked of me last night. "What would you do with only a year left to live?"

Maybe a better question is: Why do we as believers live in complacency, dreaming up dreams as if we believe we can accurately plan out our next year, or as if we know the number of our days? It's arrogant and vain. I know this was a hypothetical and open-ended question, but I respond with a question because many of
 us live like we will have the chance to cross off a bucket list, or like we have some amount of authority to make grandiose decisions or thoughts other than what God has given us, or as if owning worldly possessions or having certain experiences might be the pinnacle of our fulfillment, as if dying with and raising with Christ isn't enough, or like it might amuse God for us to think big and pride ourselves for including Him in our thoughts. Jesus made Himself nothing (Philippians 2). David sought God's heart and Solomon sought wisdom, knowing all else was vanity. Generally speaking, we seek that vanity. 2 Corinthians 10:5 tells us to take all our thoughts captive to the knowledge of Christ, and to destroy lofty opinions.

Truthfully, we should be doing what we would do on our last day or last year every day, but then, if what we would do is completely irresponsible and selfish, why do it at all?

My husband and I actually tried to sell all our possessions a few months ago so we could have absolutely nothing but a few pairs of clothing and our books, but people in this economy aren't buying much, so we were stuck and now our garage is filled with our excess. (We're not going to bring it back in the house.) We felt the Lord had led us to do such, and so we obeyed. What we discovered is that God was testing our levels of commitment, though we thought it odd because of how easy for us it was to say "Sure, we don't need our dining room table, we can eat on the floor," and we did, for months, because things are going to get much worse for Christians in the near future. What in the world does an earthly table matter when we know we will dine with the LORD at His table beyond this crippled breath of a life? It was a tiny testimony, yet even my husband's parents were concerned that we were getting rid of so much. But why so many "things?" All they do is distract us from what's important.

Would we just get up and go? Take off somewhere without telling people that God wanted us to shift? Yes. Are we attached? Not even to our loved ones. Our consideration for our families looks like hatred compared to our love of God, and it's not for lack of love or consideration for others, because those who do know us personally know that we have love, for if we did not, we'd have nothing. But God's ripped our relationships apart just as Scripture said would happen, having been rejected for standing fast in the truth, and we'd rather be where God wants us to be than stay with people who might easily have a different direction or ministry from God. This isn't even to say we're going anywhere. I'm just telling you where our hearts are.

This isn't meant to be dramatic. Our lives are spiritually combative for the God-Man who saved us -- unto hunger, homelessness, poverty, robbery, slander, false accusations, sleepless nights, and daily attacks on our faith that we embrace and almost seek, keeping Romans 5:3-5 in mind, risking daily because nothing even remotely compares to knowing Jesus and living to bear witness to the truth.

Assume in the next few months or possibly few years, I'll be [at least] arrested for speaking the truth, along with my husband. Also assume I won't be on the internet much. I'll probably be in the woods running from people, surviving, and being hunted by those who hate Jesus, using every chance I have to tell people the Gospel, dodging stones and bullets. I have no better idea than that. My ambition in life is only to live for God's purposes. My own are fickle and pathetic. All I care about is getting the message across. I'll be the person shunned from most churches because when I go to tell them to repent, I'll be rejected, since "God loves them anyway." It's happened already a few times, and I know what I've seen is NOTHING compared to what it's going to be like soon. Serious stuff.