In 1999 Justin Zackham drew up his bucket list of things he wanted to do before he died. Later it was produced as a movie starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman. Hence it entered American culture. We often hear individuals jokingly or seriously speak about fulfilling their bucket list. What would you put in your bucket list?

As believers, we set goals. These goals keep us motivated, give us hope under the sun, fill our lives with purpose. Yet we must do this in the light of God’s Word:

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow, we shall go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.” Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and also do this or that.” But as it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. (Jam 4:13-17)

Years before the age of bucket lists, a young couple in college started attending our church. Both came from solid Christian homes and were genuine believers but were holding back and not getting involved in church life. When I ask the young man why he was holding back, he responded that he was afraid if he did get involved, the Lord would call him into fulltime Christian service. I asked him what he wanted to do in life. He said he wanted to be a dentist. I shared Proverbs 37:4-7 with him:

Delight yourself in the Lord; And He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He will do it. And He will bring forth your righteousness as the light, And your judgment as the noonday. Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him; (Ps 37:4-7)

I encouraged him to follow his dream. The couple moved to another university where he entered the school of dentistry. I lost track of them for the next several years. One day we reconnected at a conference. He ran up to me excited that he was graduating but even more, that he and his wife were headed to the mission field. He was going to be a missionary dentist.

Our bucket list will be God’s bucket list when we put Him first. King David was known as “a man after (God’s) own heart.” (1 Sam 13:14; Acts 13:22) Later we read, “. . .after he had served the purpose of God in his own generation, (he) fell asleep.” (Acts 13:36)

Paul, a prisoner in Rome, wrote “. . . for to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” (Phil 1:21) The first item we should put in our bucket list is to live for Christ. The second, for God to accomplish His purpose for us in our lifetime.