Outlive: A Walk With Moses (Psalm 90)نموونە

Can we outlive our days? No! But God’s servants can outlive their deaths. How so?

Let’s look at the climactic conclusion to Moses’s prayer.

Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us;

And confirm for us the work of our hands;

Yes, confirm the work of our hands. (Psalm 90:17)

These past few years, I’ve deliberately pointed many friends to Psalm 90:17. There is not a single one of us who would not want to offer that prayer.

The powerful word “confirm” carries two dimensions to it.

One, Moses requests God to establish his lifelong work. Without God granting us favor, everything will be weightless and wasted. God needs to stabilize our work and grant it success, not unlike Jesus’s plain-spoken assertion: “Apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). It takes God’s favor for our labors to carry spiritual significance.

Two, Moses invites God to extend our work beyond our lives. The line is repeated for emphasis; without God, we can do nothing of value or eternal consequence.

In a final segment of Scripture and history itself, those who struggled in labor and sorrow and yet remained faithful hear an amazing pronouncement:

And I heard a voice from heaven, saying, “Write, ‘Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on!’” “Yes,” says the Spirit, “so that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow with them.” (Revelation 14:13)

That promise can be brought forward canonically to all believers. When God is at work, your impact never ends.

In 1706, two young Germans, aged 24 and 29, set out to the southeastern corner of India with missional intention. They made every mistake novice missionaries could make. But the fanner to the king of the region encountered the gospel through them and embraced its message.

More than 300 years later, you are reading the words of that fanner’s descendant. The missionaries’ work was confirmed. They brought the gospel to my family. And centuries later, I trusted in Christ. They could never have known how God would establish and extend their work in the favor of the Lord their God.

Engage in the eternal, and your works will last past the grave.

Can you outlast your days? No! Can you outlive your death? Yes!