42. Life is Short: Live it Purposefully!

A new season, a renewed focus, and an invitation to live with eternal intention

Life is short—how are you choosing to live it?

In this episode of Courageous Retirement, I reflect on the reality that our days are limited and invite you into a conversation about living purposefully, not just productively.

Scripture reminds us, “Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12). That wisdom isn’t about rushing through life—it’s about aligning our time, energy, and calling with what matters eternally.

I revisit themes from Episode 85, “Longing for More,” where I shared the simple but sobering truth that most of us are given no more than 100 years based on the song, A Hundred Years to Live. That awareness isn’t meant to create fear, but clarity—and perhaps courage.

In this episode, we’ll reflect on:
-What it means to ask God, “Teach me how to live” (Psalm 27:11)
-How to wait patiently for the Lord without wasting the season we’re in (Psalm 27:14)
-The question many of us quietly carry: What has my soul longed to do, but I’ve been too busy, afraid, or distracted to pursue?
-Purpose in every season—whether you’re still working, newly retired, or redefining what’s next

I also share personally about a new season I’m stepping into—recognizing that even good work can sometimes crowd out the work we’re most called to do. As part of that realignment, 'Courageous Retirement' will continue in an audio-only format for a time, allowing me to lean more fully into coaching and walking alongside others as they discern and live their God-given purpose.

We close with a reflection on the art of masterful living—a way of life where faith is integrated into every part of who we are, and where work, rest, calling, and joy are no longer in competition. Read it here. 

My prayer is that this conversation encourages you to pause, listen, and take one faithful step toward living the life your soul longs for.

“Teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.” — Psalm 90:12

Thank you for stopping by today! Remember to Engage Your Faith and Live Your More as you reap the benefits of Courageous Retirement!

To watch the video, check out my YouTube Channel!

Learn more about the show, author Vona Johnson, and more at vonajohnson.com!

Schedule a free 15 minute Your Path to More call with Vona.

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Transcript

0:00

Have you ever had a moment where you just suddenly realize how fast life really is moving? I wanna talk about how life is short today. Not to create fear in you, but to motivate you to really think about what God may have in store for you for the rest of your life. This episode is an invitation to encourage you to live intentionally, not frantically trying to do all the things that the world tells us we need to do, but to really think about what it is we can be doing to fulfill our God-given purpose.

Speaker: 0:31

Do you fear? What lies beyond retirement? What if it's a gateway to a life filled with purpose, meaning, and adventure rather than an end? Discover peace and fulfillment as you boldly enter this new chapter in Courageous Retirement, a Christian podcast. I'm your host, author, and coach Vona Johnson. Let's get started.

0:50

Reading by Devotion the other day. I came across Psalm 90:12 that says,"Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom." Now, when we think about numbering our days, none of us really know when our last breath will be, but we can be sure that if we still have breath, we still have a purpose. It may not be the grand things that we think we should have, but truly it may just be loving the people that are there. Maybe it, maybe we don't even have friends and loved ones anymore, but it's sharing God's love with the nurses in the hospital or wherever that is. We can always tell his story through our story, when you think about the number of days that you have left, I really want you to stop and ask yourself, what do I want to see happen before I die? Yeah, that's a big question. Not to be morbid, but to really think about am I taking steps in the direction towards fulfilling my eternal purpose here on earth? A number of years ago, I did an episode and also created a blog,"A hundred Years to Live." It's based on the song, a hundred Years to Live and. When we think about how brief our time is here on earth in comparison to eternity, it does go by rapidly and our time is short, and sometimes we get focused on things. Kind of the busy work of getting things done that may or may not really be our purpose. I think we get so wrapped up sometimes in this ideal of what the perfect life should be like. That we don't just live in the moment. We don't live for and with the people that God has brought into our lives. And so I just really want you to think about, how brief our life is and are we making an impact? Are we living and encouraging people to fulfill their God-given purpose? Psalm 27:11 says,"Teach me your way. Oh Lord, lead me on a level path." And you know, when you think about it, we aren't taught how to live life. We learn from the people around us. We observe others, pick out the parts we like. Sometimes we follow the path that we set for ourselves pretty well, and other times we stumble and fall and miss the mark entirely. What I love about life is that, as we learn and grow and stumble and fall, we learn to trust God and we can let go of all of the negative feelings around some of the things that happen and, and really stop and realize that there are lessons in our lives that we are meant to learn. And if we're stuck somewhere, we've either still have a lesson to learn there or. We aren't moving on and God is kind of nudging us and we're we're, you know, being too busy or too distracted or maybe even afraid to take that step. He's nudging us to, and I just want you to take a pause, um, when we're thinking about the brevity of life, pause and see where you may be, are holding back from doing the next step that God was asking you to take. The next verse that really struck me as I was preparing for this episode is Psalm 27:14."Wait patiently for the Lord. Be brave and courageous. Yes. Wait patiently for the Lord." You know, there's this idea that we always have to be doing something that, if we're not busy and productive, we're not fulfilling God's purpose and truly, um, being fruitful. From a biblical standpoint is really living out the fruit of the spirit and bringing others to understand how they too can live in the fruit of the spirit. It's showing them Christ's love and encouraging them to, to fulfill that purpose. There are a lot of ways that we can fulfill our God-given purpose, and it's a skill to learn how to interject our thoughts appropriately and when to withhold our thoughts and tell the appropriate moment to do so. There's a real art, if you will, to, to living life. Kind of on the edge the way God would want us to. It's funny because I did an article, on LinkedIn and I'm sure I also posted it on my blog called'The Art of Masterful Living,' and I talked about masterful living to being a lot like a shuffleboard game. And it's like we need to have put enough oomph into whatever it is that we're working on to get to the end of the board. But if we put too much into it, we crash off the end. Right. Well, it's the same thing. We need to put enough. Vibrancy into our life to, to go out and do the things God's asking us to. But we also need to know kind of when to pull back and just rest so that we can maximize our time and our effort, both from fulfilling our purpose, but also from just taking time to rest and enjoy our lives. You know, sometimes God gives us a hope, a dream, a desire, and it doesn't come to be right away. And we don't know why that is. We give it everything we have. We think we're doing everything right and sometimes it just doesn't happen. And that waiting can be really hard and it can be really frustrating. And sometimes we will rush out and do things to make it happen on our own. I want you to think about that for a moment. Is there something that your soul is longing for? Is there something that you feel that God has asked you to do? And have you been too busy and too afraid to do that? Or have you been pushing and pushing hard to make it happen and it's not happening? I just really encourage you to think about how much of it is your effort and how much of it is God's effort. I loved how a movie I watched the other day that the main character said, you know, my job is to do the work that God's given me to do with excellence. And then to let it go and let him do his work with excellence. That wasn't exactly a direct quote, but it truly, there is, um, you know, that philosophy, I've talked about it a lot, where we show up with the loaves and the fishes and God can do the miracle. Beyond that, we don't have to know how to do the rest. We just do what he asks us to do. So if you are at or near what I call the best season of life, if you're still working and you're loving your job, and you're feeling like you're fulfilling your purpose, then you are exactly where you should be. On the other hand, if you're starting to get that sense that there is more, that there's something missing in your life, and, and it's time to, to make a change, first of all. I wanna challenge you to look at where you are and if there are things that you need to do to fulfill your legacy right there. Are there relationships that you need to strengthen? Are there lessons that you need to share with people that you work with so that they can carry on the good work that you've started there? If not, then maybe it is time to go. Maybe it's time to take your gifts and talents that God has given you and explore new ways to use those talents. One of the things that I got hung up with right away when I retired was this idea that I had all of these. Achievements and skills that I had developed and that I needed to go another step up, I needed to apply them to a bigger, more important job. And I feel like part of the reason that I maybe haven't done all the things that I thought I was going to do in retirement and in my coaching career is because I made it bigger. I tried to turn it into, um, the identity of the paycheck, the, the recognition and all of that. When in reality God was just saying, no, I need you to serve this person right now. And it may be something really simple and something that would be be considered meanial that I would've never, um, considered something to be paid for in my previous work. So don't, don't put the worldly standards on what you're going to be doing next. Just think about how you can bring joy to your life and the people that God brings into your life in that next step. Um, it's almost like putting everything out there that you love and enjoy and your talents and skills, and finding ways to blend those together to really just live life fully. My publisher, Kari Ober Bruner wrote a book called The Deeper Path, and he shared a quote in that book that really struck me. It's from LP Jacks and it resonates with me deeply. It goes like this. A master of the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing. And leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing to himself, he always appears to be doing both." And I just really love that concept of just do the things that God nudges you to do. Sometimes they're great and fun and productive. Other times they seem menial. And maybe just something that you enjoy doing and you don't see the purpose. And we aren't always going to know when some of those things are a distraction or pulling us away. Or when there's just building for the next season that we don't even know is coming. And the reason I bring that up is I, have started working with a coach. For a lot of reasons, I haven't worked with Coach for a long time, but I found one that I just really felt like God was nudging me to to have a conversation with. And as we're talking through the situation, he has helped me realize that I have allowed. This podcast even to be something that even though I really enjoy the work, I've been using it as a distraction from doing the thing that I really feel that I have been called to do, and that is to coach others to fulfill their God-given purpose, to answer God's call to more in their lives. So as a result of that, one of the things that I'm gonna do to make more space, to be able to, to help more people one-on-one, to really go deep with their relationship with God, do a deep dive into their faith and, and find that thing that just brings them joy and excitement. I'm going to shift this podcast a little bit and it's, I'm only going to do it in audio format. For this season? Is that forever? I don't even know right now. I just know that, um, the, the YouTube version has, it just has a lot more steps to it, and it's taking up time that I feel I can use more productively in another way. So from this episode season, episode. The first episode of season three, I am now, after this one, I will, you will only be able to find me on courageous Retirement on an audio platform. So if this is something you enjoy, I hope that you'll go subscribe on one of your favorite platforms so that you can continue to hear. I just feel like there's a lot of exciting things here coming up, and I would love for you to walk that journey with me. So, um, this isn't signing off from the podcast, it's just. Bringing it back a little bit. I fully intend to continue to release the show every two weeks as I have been. God may tell me that that's something different later. I don't even know. And and that's fine because. I, it's, it's a part of just modeling that intentional living, that masterful living of figuring out how we fit the pieces together to live out the call that God has on our lives. So I wanna challenge you to think about what is it, you know, where is God calling you to more? What, and sometimes more is pulling back from things that you're doing that that are just wasting time and maybe feeling your ego, but not fulfilling your real purpose. Or are there other places where maybe it's time, you know, you've already retired and you're finding that you're kind of coasting and it's not really that fulfilling. Maybe it's time to rethink of what retirement looks like and and find different pieces to put'em together and figure out how you can master the art of living. I would love to help you with that. If this is something that resonates with you, I'm gonna ask you to. Um, to just really think about how, um, you can re reshape your life and. Um, you know, just learn how to blend your faith into your daily life. Stop worrying about all of the things that are happening in the world that you have no control over. Stop having self doubts about whether you can do the thing that God's calling you to, because the devil will try and convince us that we can't do that even though our soul really longs for that, and that we can just truly have, uh. The courage to live out our convictions, to do things that live out our convictions. And we can talk about that in future episodes. So right now, I went, I just encourage you to, to ask God, um, as, as we talked about earlier in the episode, Lord, you know, just pray to him and ask Lord, teach me how to live, how to live your purpose now, today, in this season. And then when you stay quiet and you listen to his response, then I want you to think about what is one small step that you can take to start fulfilling that purpose that God has for you in your life. If this is something you would like to talk about, um, I'm just getting started. I don't even really know exactly what the results of working with my coach is gonna look like. But if you are one of those action takers and you're like, Ooh, this sounds good, and I am not wanting to wait to see what, what, where it's going, reach out to me. Give me, uh, shoot me an email at vona@vonajohnson.com. Or connect with me at LinkedIn and send me a direct message there. Uh, I would love to have a conversation with you about how God is nudging you to more in your life, how he is asking you to step into your true calling for this season. Doesn't have to be forever, but for right now. Life is so short and we have been giving so many gifts and opportunities to fulfill our God, be given. Life is so short and we have been giving so many gifts and talents and opportunities to fulfill God's purpose in our lives. But if we just bury that talent under the, the sand, under the ground and don't use'em. We have missed a huge opportunity to fulfill our God-given purpose. We have not produced the fruit that he has asked us to. So just, um, wanna thank you so much for stopping by today, and it's just a blessing to spend. I just wanna thank you so much for stopping by today and I pray that if you haven't already subscribe to Courageous Retirement be if you haven't already, subscribe to Courageous Retirement because we're gonna have some good things coming up in this season and I would not want you to miss a, a one minute of it. So God bless. Happy New Year and I see I will see you in two weeks in the next episode of Courageous Retirement. Wow.