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.
priorities
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.
Trust without Borders
I often listen to music as I drift to sleep at night. Recently I’ve been playing the song, “Oceans”, by Hillsong United. When I woke this morning, the lyrics were stuck in my head. In particular the line, “Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders”, kept impressing itself upon me. I started to think about what that looks like in our lives. What would I do if my trust in God had no borders, no limits? It’s easy to confess our faith in God, particularly for those of us who grew up in the Church. It is much harder to proclaim your faith without putting any limitations on it whatsoever.
Living for the Emergency
The wisdom of A.W. Tozer never ceases to astound me. Let me share some words of his I recently read: “Before the judgment seat of Christ my service will be judged not by how much I have done, but by how much I could have done! In God’s sight, my giving is measured not by how much I have given, but by how much I had left after I made my gift.” He goes on to say that “[Jesus] sacrificed many pure enjoyments to give Himself to the holy work of moral rescue. His conduct was determined not by what was legitimate or innocent, but by our human need. He pleased not Himself but lived for the emergency; and as He was so are we in this world!” (“Renewed Day by Day Volume 1”, 2/19)
Your Life Word
For the past couple of years, at the beginning of the year, I’ve developed a theme phrase that has guided my life throughout the rest of the year. Two years ago my phrase was, “Consume less; contribute more”. That totally revolutionized the way I lived my life. Last year my phrase was, “Take action”. After doing some reading (“My One Word”” by Mike Ashcraft and “One Word That Will Change Your Life” by Jon Gordon) and listening to a sermon from Craig Groeschel, I decided to slim things down a bit this year and have a theme word instead of a theme phrase. In fact I took it a step further and came up with a theme word for my life, as well as one for the upcoming year.