What is the measure of your life? That is one of the most important questions you must ask and answer in your life. How you answer this question reveals a lot about you and will shape your life in profound ways. Some people are genuinely not sure and are still searching for an answer. But most people are already operating based on a certain answer to this question, whether or not they even realize it. Ask yourself, What am I living for? What makes life worth living? What is it that I am ultimately pursuing in life? How you answer those questions reveals what you think is the greatest good in life, because the thing which you elevate above all else and pursue more than anything else becomes the measure of your life. 

It’s a little like tying your life to a buoy floating in a harbor. When the tide is up, you’re up; but when the tide is down, you’re down too. If you have the thing that is the measure of your life, then you feel good. But if you lose that thing, then you are crushed, you are devastated. This means that we must be careful what we make the measure of our life. We must choose wisely.

For many people, the measure of their life is comfort and pleasure. Whatever brings pleasure is pursued, and whatever impedes pleasure or causes discomfort is avoided at all costs. But for those who pursue pleasure and comfort as the greatest good, the unavoidable difficulties in life will prove a crushing burden. For others, the measure of their life is prestige and power. They consider their life a success if they command the attention of others, if they have the title after their name, if they have the praise of men. But when these things are lost or taken away, they have nothing. 

One of the devil’s greatest lies that he has peddled very successfully is the lie that my life consists in having great possessions. We are constantly bombarded with messages promoting this great deception. The vast majority of advertising is based on this false premise that your life would be better, happier, and more meaningful if you just had more, more, more. This is what our culture conditions us to view as the measure of our life. But through all the materialistic noise of our culture and every culture since his day, the words of Jesus ring clear. “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions” (Luke 12:15). Ask yourself, What am I living for? What is the measure of my life? If it is anything less than the glory of God, you are pursuing that which can never satisfy. We were created for the Lord, and nothing else can satisfy. “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart” (Psalm 37:4). Anything less can never satisfy.