Choose How You Will Be Remembered: Living for What Truly Matters

Summary

Obituaries reveal what people value, but believers shape their legacy daily through their choices. While self-focused living comes naturally, God calls His children to serve others sacrificially and strengthen His church. Like Phoebe, faithful believers leave a lasting spiritual impact. Earthly remembrance fades, but Christ’s final judgment endures. Only a life lived for God and others truly matters.

What Obituaries Reveal About a Life

What will people remember about us after we pass from this life? Obituaries usually include information about the departed’s interests, accomplishments, and the importance of family. I have removed the names, but a sampling follows.

“She loved gardening, cooking, watercolor painting, and entertaining her family and friends. She brought love and laughter to so many.”

“He proudly served as an umpire for 25 years. He was also an active youth football and wrestling coach. He was an avid Yankees and Penn State Football fan and enjoyed golfing. Sports were a large part of his life, but time spent with his family was most important to him.”

“She enjoyed traveling on cruises, camping, and spending time with her family.”

“He was a retired truck driver.  He loved music and sports and enjoyed fishing.”

“He loved going to the beach, walking, dancing, traveling, fishing, hunting, and golfing.  He lived life to the fullest and especially loved his time with his family.”

“Until the end, he could be found outdoors: hunting and fishing, but most of all, golfing.  He valued most his family and boasted of their accomplishments to anyone who lent an ear.  He traveled the world with his wife.”

Living for What Truly Matters

The funeral home, which published the above obituaries, advertises, “Choose how you want to be remembered.” That is profound, but probably wasn’t meant to be so. We choose how we will be remembered daily, whether consciously or otherwise.

Our choices determine our destiny and how God and people remember us. God’s evaluation of our lives is most important because life continues after the funeral.

The Temptation to Live for Self

Our natural inclination is to trumpet our accomplishments to prove our worth and spend time doing what pleases our immediate family. Spending time with our family is good, but saved and unsaved people do that. What are we as children of God doing that most people aren’t?

Phoebe and a Life That Helped Many

Paul commended Phoebe, a deacon in the church in Cenchrea, to the church in Rome. He told them to welcome her in the Lord as worthy of honor among God’s people and to help meet her needs. She had been helpful to many, and especially to him (Romans 16:1–2).

The Fragrance We Leave Behind

Are we helpful to many—unbelievers and especially other believers? Are they better because of our threescore years and ten on Earth? Do we leave behind the sweet fragrance of Christ or the stench of self-centered living?

Are people following and becoming more like Jesus and helping others do the same because of our influence? Is the church of Jesus Christ stronger because of what we have said, given, written, and done? Only a life lived for others is worth living.

We must choose to deny ourselves and spend our lives loving God and others sacrificially and fulfilling the Kingdom-building purpose for which God created us. Alternatively, we can decide to gratify our desires and live for ourselves. However, our obituary isn’t the final word.

The Final Judgment That Truly Counts

“For we must all stand before Christ to be judged. We will each receive whatever we deserve for the good or evil we have done in this earthly body” (2 Corinthians 5:10 NLT). That will be the final word.

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