During my reading time recently, I came across a prayer that spoke the words I have been feeling deep in my heart: “Lord I pray that I will always keep my eyes on eternity and that the cares of this world will not distract me from my mission of serving You each day.” What a powerful and dangerous prayer! If we were to live our lives in this manner, we would appear to be quite “weird” in the eyes of our culture and would certainly alienate more than a few friends. What if we could cast off the cares of this world and concern ourselves only with the things of God’s Kingdom? If we could honestly pray that God would fix our eyes on Him and then really live that out, I think we would be amazed at what was possible.
Your Money Perspective
Money is a tremendous tool when used appropriately. God blesses us so that we in turn will bless others. When we use what we have been given for His glory and to further His Kingdom, money is a great blessing. We are blessed with it by God so that we can bless others for God, which in turn brings glory to God. This is the proper use of what we have been entrusted to manage. It’s all about what we do with money that counts. In and of itself, money is useless, just bits of paper and metal. Put to proper use, it becomes amazingly powerful and good. There is, of course, a dark side to money as well.
Preoccupied with God
I never cease to be amazed at the wisdom and relevancy of A.W. Tozer. Though he died in 1963, his writings continue to inspire and convict over fifty years later. I am convinced that the key to intimacy with God is being totally obsessed with Jesus. Until we live every moment of our lives with Him at the forefront of our thoughts, we will never discover the life He intended us to live. With that in mind, I recently read a very timely piece by Tozer. In it he said, “Only engrossment with God can maintain perpetual spiritual enthusiasm because only God can supply everlasting novelty. In God every moment is new and nothing ever gets old. Of things religious we may become tired, even prayer may weary us; but God never! … Nothing can preserve the sweet savor of our first experience except to be preoccupied with God Himself!”
Essential Intent
In his book, “Essentialism”, Greg McKeown coined the phrase “essential intent”. The author describes an essential intent as “one decision that settles one thousand later decisions.” That’s exactly what our decision to follow Christ should do for us. By simply saying yes to Jesus, so many other decisions are made for us. We don’t have to stress and deliberate over what to do in any given circumstance, because we know we should do whatever it is Jesus would do in the same situation. When we give our lives to Jesus, we allow Him to decide the fate of a thousand later decisions with which we will be faced. This essential intent allows us to live in freedom, unencumbered by the choices that afflict so many others who have chosen to seek life in a manner inconsistent with that for which they were created.
The Greatest Commandment
A religious leader once asked Jesus what was the most important commandment of all (Matthew 22:34-40). His reply was to “Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, soul, and mind.” He went on to say that the second greatest commandment was to love everyone else as much as we love ourselves. This is the essence of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. Our lives are to be consumed with Him, and the way we express that is by giving the same love He has given us to everyone we meet. These are really the only “rules” required to be a disciple of Jesus. If we live in this way, we can be assured that we are living in the will of God.