What Will You Do With All Your Life?

Last week, All Your Life officially released into the world, and after all the writing, rewriting, editing, planning, and talking about this book, it feels a little surreal to say that.

Whenever a book comes out, there’s a lot of attention on the book itself. Will people buy it? Will they read it? Will they recommend it to someone else? Will it find its way into the hands of the people who need it?

Of course I think about those things. I hope people read this book. I hope parents give it to their kids and college students read it with their friends. I hope churches and small groups use it to have honest conversations about what it actually means to follow Jesus.

But underneath all of those hopes is something much deeper. I wrote All Your Life because I have become increasingly convinced that Jesus is worth your whole life, and I’m not sure we say that clearly enough anymore.

Over the last few weeks here, we’ve been talking about what it means to follow Jesus in this particular moment. We’ve talked about the renewed spiritual interest we seem to be seeing, especially among young people, and whether that interest will actually turn into discipleship. We’ve asked what we’re looking to for the life only Jesus can give, and last week we wrestled with whether we’ve made following Jesus too comfortable.

All of those conversations have really been leading to one question:

What will you do with the life God has given you?

Because one of my concerns for Christians today isn’t simply that we’ll walk away from Jesus. It’s that we’ll stay close enough to Christianity to call ourselves Christians while keeping large parts of our lives for ourselves.

We can believe in Jesus and still build our lives around our own desires. We can attend church, read our Bibles, listen to Christian podcasts, and sincerely love God while quietly assuming that our relationships, ambitions, money, influence, habits, and future are mostly ours to manage.

But when I read the Gospels, that’s not the kind of following Jesus describes.

Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23). He doesn’t invite us to fit Him into the life we’ve already planned. He invites us to entrust the whole thing to Him.

And yes, that kind of surrender is costly.

Following Jesus may cost you comfort. It may cost you approval. It may change a relationship you were sure you needed, redirect a career you had carefully planned, or ask you to let go of a dream you thought would make you happy. There are seasons when obedience feels more like losing than gaining.

But after following Jesus for a lot of years now, I can tell you that the things I have surrendered to Him have never made me wish I had trusted Him less.

In fact, the older I get, the more convinced I become that Jesus wasn’t exaggerating when He said, “Whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 16:25).

That is the strange and beautiful paradox at the heart of following Jesus. We spend so much of our lives trying to find ourselves, secure ourselves, protect our futures, and make sure we don’t miss out. Jesus invites us to stop clinging so tightly to the life we think we need and trust Him with the life He has actually given us.

And somehow, in surrendering our lives to Him, we find them.

That’s really why I wrote All Your Life.

I didn’t write it because I think the world needs another Christian book. I wrote it because I look at the next generation and desperately want them to discover a faith sturdy enough to carry the weight of an entire life.

I want them to know Jesus deeply enough that they don’t abandon Him when the church disappoints them. I want them to know the Bible well enough that they aren’t tossed around by every new idea that sounds compelling. I want them to understand that following Jesus reaches into their relationships and habits, their emotions and calling, their influence and money, and even the future they are trying so hard to figure out.

I want them to understand that Christianity isn’t one category of life alongside school, career, relationships, family, finances, and dreams. Jesus is Lord over all of it.

But more than anything, I want them to know that He is worthy of all of it.

That’s the part I hope comes through on every page of this book. Following Jesus isn’t about grudgingly handing over everything we love to a demanding God. It’s about discovering that the One asking for our lives is the One who gave His life for us. We surrender to Someone who loves us, knows us, and sees more clearly than we ever could what our lives are meant to become.

Last week, this book left my hands in a way. It belongs to its readers now, and I have no idea where God will take it or what He will choose to do through it.

But I know what I’m praying.

I’m praying that somewhere, a young person reads it and decides that halfway Christianity isn’t enough. I’m praying that someone who has been drifting remembers why Jesus is worth following. I’m praying that parents and mentors have conversations they might not otherwise have had. And I’m praying that all of us, no matter how long we’ve followed Jesus, ask ourselves again whether He really has all of us.

Because long after this book launch is over, that question will still matter.

We get one life. One collection of ordinary days, unexpected turns, relationships, opportunities, disappointments, gifts, failures, and dreams. We don’t get to know exactly how it will unfold, and we don’t get to keep it forever.

But we do get to decide what we will do with it.

What will you do with all your life?

My hope is that when everything is said and done, our answer will be simple:

I gave it to Jesus.

And if this is the kind of life you want—or if there’s a young person in your life you want this for—All Your Life is officially available now. I’d love for you to grab a copy for yourself, give one to someone you love, or read it together and start a conversation about what it really means to follow Jesus with all your life.

Because ultimately, I didn’t write this book just to be read. I wrote it with the hope that it would help us live differently.

Jesus is worth your whole life. Let’s give it to Him.

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