Ep. 41 - Live While You Are Alive

In this episode, I reflect on the powerful celebration of life service for a remarkable woman whose purposeful living left a profound impact on many. I share two key lessons from the tributes paid to her: to truly live while we are alive by being intentional and purposeful, and to not give up or 'die' before our journey ends. We explore what it means to live with divine purpose, overcoming failures, disappointments, and challenges, and the importance of continual perseverance. Join me as I encourage you to find and fulfill your purpose, making a lasting impact on the lives of others.

00:00 Introduction: Honoring a Life Well-Lived
01:19 Live While You Are Alive
02:57 Discovering and Pursuing Your Purpose
06:55 Challenges and Disappointments
10:04 Encouragement to Keep Going
12:33 Conclusion: Making a Lasting Impact

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Transcript

0:00

when people die, it's nothing new for people to say nice things about them at their funeral service or their celebration of life service. But when the mayor of your town lowers the flag on the town hall, Just because they hear that you've died and make an official post on social media asking people to honor you because you've died. And people travel from all over the world, from Africa, from America, and from all over the UK to attend this celebration of life service. Then what was said at that service about how this person lived is what I want to pay attention to. And this was what happened a few weeks ago when my wife and I were invited to the celebration of life service of this person. Lovely woman of God who had just passed on and we attended and so many things were said by so many people From different parts of the world people who knew her people who she works with people who she did charity work with Family friends and people who knew her from different parts of life. But of the many things that were said, a couple of things stood out for me. And those are the two things I want to share with you on this episode. And this might be an unusually short episode, but I'm sure that what you will hear will be a huge blessing and encouragement to you. The first of the two things I want to share with you from what was said at that service was very simply, Live while you are alive. Live while you are alive. And that's important because sadly, unfortunately, many people are alive. biologically, in the sense that they're breathing and they breathe out the biological functions of their body are going on. But are they truly living? What does it truly mean to live? This woman, Was described as someone who truly lived. She didn't just have biological life, but she truly lived. I believe to live is to be intentional. For us to truly live, we have to be intentional about the direction of our lives because. Animals have life. All forms of biological life exist, but not all of them are intentional in how they live. Not all of them are deliberate in the direction that their life is going. For a human being to truly live, Means, not just to go in a direction because that is where society is going, not just to go in a direction because that is the easiest path to go, not just to go in a direction because that's where you stumble into and that's the easiest thing to do, but to have a predetermined destination and to take steps that would ensure that you arrive at that predetermined destination. How does one know what that destination should be? I believe that it is purpose, divine purpose that gives you that direction. And helps you determine what that destination is that you should be living for. Blindly following society's path, which very simply is get a good education, secure a high paying job so you can pay your bills and so on. And as we put it, make a living. More often than not, means that people end up just being alive and not living. Really living. There's no fire in their belly. There's no desire. There's no passion. They're not living for something that they are willing to die for. They're not living for something that they are convinced is the sole purpose, is the sole reason for their existence. Every human being. Has a purpose. You have a purpose and your purpose is from your creator. You don't decide your purpose. Just like a manufactured product doesn't decide what its purpose is, you don't decide why you are here. God sent you here with a predetermined purpose. Your responsibility, my responsibility, is to discover what that purpose is. And until we discover what that purpose is, we don't truly start living. It's been said that there are a few very important days in the life of a man. The first is the day he was born. And the next is the day he discovers why he was born. Now, that's the discovery of purpose. Living. Starts the day we discover our purpose. Because it is when we discover our purpose that we will know what we should be living for. That we will be able to eliminate things from our lives and say, this is not contributing to the direction that my life should be going. This is not a significant contributor to the direction of my purpose. Because everything I do should be leading me to fulfill my purpose. That is what it truly means to live. This woman was said to have lived. She wasn't just alive. She truly lived because she discovered what her purpose was. She identified what God put her on this earth to do, and she lived for that sole purpose. And so when the time came and she died, people could travel from all over the world. Gather around and give glowing testimonials with proof of the impact that her life had on their lives. So the challenge for you and I today is the question, are we truly living or are we just existing or are we just alive? Are we just having biological functions or are we in pursuit of purpose? So it takes some time to think about that. Live while you are alive. The second thing that was said at this celebration of life service was, You will die soon enough, don't die until the end. You and I will die soon enough. Let's not die until the end. You may not feel like it, especially if you're still relatively young. You may not be thinking about dying. Death may not be the prominent thing on your mind right now. But the truth remains that from the day we were born, from the day you and I were born, we begin to travel in one direction. We begin to travel in the direction of death. We start dying. The number of days allocated to us to live on this earth begin to reduce. We start using Those days. So we're all dying. It's just at a different rate. It's just at different speeds. The challenge is whether we're going to die before the end comes. What does it mean to die? What does it mean to die? I believe to die means to stop while you still have breath in your nostrils. I believe to die means to stop living While you still have breath in your new truth, to stop pursuing your purpose means that you've ended that journey that you were placed on this earth to go on. It means that you have stopped doing the thing that is the sole purpose for which you were put on this earth. Now, this is relevant for people who have started pursuing a purpose, people who discovered their purpose at one point or another, and were convinced that there's something. That they should be living for but they hit bumps, they face challenges, things happen and they stop. In other words, they die before the end. The end should be the day that we stop breathing. The end should be the day that we get into that coffin or we get buried. Before that, nothing else should end us. Don't let disappointments get I know you had goals, you had ambitions, you set targets, you started living for them. You started doing things, to arrive at that destination that you were convinced was your purpose. But there were disappointments, maybe disappointments in yourself because You made choices that you look back on and you're literally ashamed of. I can relate to that. I've made investments that cost me money, and I look back and I'm like, Uche, how could you be so stupid? It was so clear. It was so obvious. How could you do that? How could you make such choices? I've said things that I look back at, and I'm disappointed that I used the words I used. I'm sure you are probably too. But we mustn't let our failures and our disappointments with ourselves stop us. We mustn't let disappointments with people stop us as well. People are people. We are all imperfect. and so when people that we have very high expectations of feel or so disappoint us, it's very likely to hurt us. And one of the results of that can be us getting to the point and just resolving and saying, what's the point? Why should I keep trying? There's no point. I'm just going to quit. I'm just going to stop and live in or Even before the end comes, but I want to say to you in this episode, don't let disappointments in yourself, in people, on whatever, in systems, whatever, even disappointments in God. Those of us who are people of faith, sometimes you pray and things don't go the way you expected them to go. We've got to trust in God's ultimate goodness. We've got to trust that God knows what he's doing. Doing. He's got the best plans for us and even when things don't go the way we expect them to go, that he's still a good God. He still has a plan and in the end, his plans are the best for us. Don't let disappointments stop you. That the things you set out to achieve, you did not achieve them. Or people disappointed you. Don't let that stop. You Don't let failures stop you as well. In a previous episode, I talked about failure. I shared some thoughts on failure, and one of the things I said in that episode was that only failures fail because you haven't really failed until you stop. It is when you actually stop trying. That's when you have failed because failure is an event. It's not you. You are not the failure. The thing that failed was just that event that you tried. It was that singular episode of that thing that you did. That may be the thing that failed. Not you as a person. So you must learn to isolate failure from yourself and keep going on the journey. That you're going and do not stop. Keep going because the impact that we have the potential of making can only be made when we're truly living. if we stop before the end, the lives that could have been impacted by the gifts that God has put inside of us will not be impacted. our potential that could have been maximized will not be. Maximized if we stop. I know from personal experience that one of the hardest things to do sometimes in life can be to keep going. That can be one of the hardest things to do, especially when you've been knocked down several times. You've tried things and it just seems like nothing is working. Listen to me. The last thing you want to do is to give up. You cannot afford to give up. You cannot afford to stop. The cost of stopping, the cost of dying before the end is much, much, much, much more than the pain of, continuously pushing yourself. It's much, much, much more than the pain of picking yourself up again and going again, not knowing where you're going. Whether or not that next thing you're going to do is going to work. This is what I can guarantee you that as long as you keep picking yourself up and you keep going and you're taking the lessons that you're learning from the journey that you're making, that you are becoming a better person. You are growing, you are improving because all work works. As long as you're working, it's either working on you or it's working for you. So don't give up. Keep going. Whatever it is, is threatening to stop you. That is a threat of you becoming all that you can be. So as a thriving person, as a person who wants to thrive, don't stop. That's my encouragement to you today. Live while you are alive. Live while you have breath in your life. Nostrils. because you see, it's only a matter of time and you and I will die soon enough. So let's live. Let's become everything that we can be. Let's make all the impact that we can make. Let's have all the influence, all the positive influence. that we can have so that when our time comes and people gather for us the things they will see will not just be empty words because they have to say nice things but they will be people who our lives truly touched there will be people who we truly made a difference in in their lives and they'll be giving glowing testimonials of the things that we did because we truly lived and we overcame obstacles and we did not stop until the very end. God bless you. Bye bye.