Todays Life

Ephesians 5:16-17 (NLT)
16 Make the most of every opportunity in these evil days.
17 Don’t act thoughtlessly, but understand what the Lord wants you to do.

We are about six weeks into the year and coming up on the point where most people have abandoned their New Years resolutions. People tend to make a mix of resolutions that range from physical like weight, diet and exercise. They also make commitment ones like being more positive, being on time and managing their day to day time better. The greatest return we can most likely get yet the hardest to realign are the ones around time. Time management is a misnomer in believing that we can change something that is a fixed never changing forward moving marker of our lives. We can no more manage our time than we can the wind. What we can focus on are the activities we engage in and the priority we assign to them. It seems like the older we get the faster time goes by so making the best decisions on how to spend it are important to us. Paul encourages us to think about our plans and align our actions each day to the purpose God has called us to.

“If you love life, don’t waste time because time is what life is made of. “
Benjamin Franklin

Proverbs 3:5-6    NLT ⁵ Trust in the Lord with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. ⁶ Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take. 

This direction from Solomon seems simple and straightforward. When we read it we are encouraged that if we depend on God He will show us the path or direction we need to take.  The challenge for us is not in trusting Him, seeking Him or even seeing the path He provides for us. The hardest part is to not depend on our own understanding. We have become a very independent society and our culture supports the highest levels of independence. In that image of life, we see ourselves providing for our every need and often after reading a scripture we fall back into the day to day  lives we are living without taking God with us. Whether we intended it our not we shut God out of our minds and in effect disconnected our lives from His purpose for us. God will not force Himself on anyone as he wants a close relationship that is sought by us. If we decide to go a different way He may very well say “Ok, Have it Your Way” so we can learn the hard way to not only trust and seek Him but also to follow His direction rather than ours.

1 Samuel 17:45   NLT

45 David replied to the Philistine, “You come to me with sword, spear, and javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord …..

The text in the 17^th chapter of 1 Samuel tells us that Goliath came out morning and afternoon for 40 days with the same challenge of freedom or slavery for God’s people depending on the outcome of a fight with him. Our day to day fight, often has the same recurring “Goliaths” come out against us try to control our lives by fear and doubt. That control will leave us where Goliath left Israel at the end of 40 days – right where they started. We may have the heart of David yet have a weak faith from the day to day struggles we have lived. David did not even tell Goliath what weapon he himself possessed or how he would conquer him he simply started with a faith in God who had kept him safe all his life would continue to keep him that way and then he conquered the Goliath in his life. In doing so he opened the door from where he was, to being the King of a nation. God has a purpose for each of us and the Goliath we find in our way may serve a purpose in helping strengthen our faith in God and for others to see how we deal with struggle and how God provides in our lives and will do the same for them. May our prayer today be to connect our heart and our faith to conquer the Goliath that is holding us back. God’s purpose for us is not one of slavery but of freedom and truth.

Philippians 1:6 (NLT)

⁶ And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.

Change can be a difficult word for us to process and it often brings anxiety because it complicates our lives. Like death and taxes, as the old adage goes, change is a certainty in our lives. We may not want it, or welcome it, but like time it is a constant moving reality for us. We are familiar with time and change if we have issues with our eye site. Eye site normally changes over time until things don’t look like they looked yesterday so we go see an eye Dr. The examination tells us that slowly over time, our vision has changed and we are in need of some help to restore our correct site. Once we get the help we realize how much things really changed over time while day to day we didn’t even notice it. Change has an odd property that we need to grasp – Change itself in producing results is a slow an on-going process as Paul says above “ And I am certain that God, who began the good work within you, will continue his work…..” God will begin or plant the seeds of good work in us and it will grow over time with His help until Paul says it is finished upon Jesus return. Our path in life following Gods purpose may seem like slow and grinding work but looking back one day we will see that God used it to accomplish many good things. While that process is on going the need or desire to change is immediate. Making a decision to change and go forward to a different result will require us to think and act differently over time to accomplish our goals. The purpose that God created us for is not complete until we sleep in death or Jesus returns to take us home. Either way we are in Gods service to continue the Good Work.

1 Chronicles 4: 9-10     NLT

⁹ There was a man named Jabez who was more honorable than any of his brothers………………………… ¹⁰ He was the one who prayed to the God of Israel, “Oh, that you would bless me and expand my territory! Please be with me in all that I do, and keep me from all trouble and pain!” And God granted him his request. 

Monday is the beginning of our traditional work week and we will be entering into an exchange of labor for resources to support ourselves and our families. It is often looked on with a negative attitude because many of us go to jobs rather than a career. The difference is great and lies mostly in our spiritual view of our lives and the direction we are going under God’s purpose. Both a Job and a Career are identical in the exchange above of time and energy for a return of resources in money and benefits. The great difference sits with us in our view of them and how we live. Also, in how we see the results of our efforts affecting others. If we go in to work on Monday with our head down and just do our tasks until the end of the week with no thought or interaction with others that our work might affect will for sure be looked back on one day as only a job. If we can connect our heart and spirit to our work and establish it as vocation then a career develops where we see and understand the impact of our efforts for ourselves and others. It also will move us to look ahead and plan our future in light of God’s direction and always seek as Jabez did for God to “bless us and expand our circle of influence and keep us out of trouble.”  This will allow us to look at Monday as a day of NEW opportunity and working toward a vision and goals we have set for ourselves based on God’s purpose for us in life.

The first blessing we get each day is to see God bring the sun up. We have the opportunity each day to start with a thankful heart  knowing that like the sunrise God’s love and mercy are new for us each day. Some days life and circumstances can be difficult and leave us in a stressed state of mind. Our heart and spirit can also be stressed and that in turn affects our actions and our lives. We can quickly find ourselves in a spiritual fog where we seem to be wandering in circles much like the Israelites when they left Egypt. We need to take advantage of God’s promise and start each day knowing that we have an open road in front of us and the blessings of a new day from God. May we make the most of it !  

When we make a confession of faith in Jesus Christ we receive the unmerited favor of God’s Grace in our salvation. That confession of faith is a choice we make based on the belief in our heart that God’s promise is true and that we need Him in our life. We often focus on living a good life – a good school, a good job, good friends, nice family, being honest and loving to others but, in reality until we make this confession of faith and our hearts allow God to be the center of our life we are only wandering our way thru life outside of God’s purpose for us. It often isn’t even noticeable until we fail at something and really allow it to control us while things get worse. Our focus is only on the negative with no Hope of a better tomorrow. This usually continues in our lives until God gets our attention in repeated failure or we see someone ( a witness ) that deals with circumstances in a way we have not thought of in that they have a Hope we don’t know. That Hope is a faith in Jesus Christ and it is free for everyone by making this confession and finding the Love and Hope of God as the focus of our lives.   

2 Corinthians 5:10

 ¹⁰ For we must all stand before Christ to be judged. We will each receive whatever we deserve for the good or evil we have done in this earthly body.

Jesus death on the cross and resurrection on the third day provided the certainty of God’s love for us in fulfilling His plan of salvation for everyone. Jesus death provided God’s mercy in forgiveness of our sins that we are guilty of and the unmerited blessing of eternal life, God’s Grace was assured for us in His resurrection. God’s love that was fulfilled in Jesus is available for everyone to accept as the gift of salvation. God desires a relationship with everyone yet the choice of belief in Jesus is the only way we can open a door for that relationship. Jesus died for the best and worst of us yet we often don’t think that it is a conscious choice available to everyone. It is easy to think that the choice is relative and our results in life are optional choices as well. The reality is that in Jesus sacrifice we are all accountable for the lives and works we produce while we are here in this life.

Our prayer today is that we stand ready to answer God’s “knock” of opportunity in our lives and that our works support our faith so that our lives reflect the love of Jesus Christ and that our results and motives will be found as good in His judgement.

We often take our day to day jobs as merely work. An exchange of effort for a return in resources to support our life and families. Paul reminds us here in Colossians that our vocation is a calling and we should keep our daily focus on God in our work lives. We spend approximately one third of our time in a day at work which is a lot of time for our character to reflect our lives. It also will allow our results to affect the lives of others. Our calling in life will carry with it a very important witness whether we think so or not? Others will see the efforts we put into our day and by that it will be evident to others where the focus of our lives comes from. They in turn will share with others what they see in our lives. May others see us as faithful to our calling in both our efforts and results that they may say “ Here is one who did their job well.”   

“If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.”        Dr. Martin Luther King

All of our actions in life initiate a consequence and result. That result is seen by others and is most often how we are viewed and judged by those who see these actions. If our actions are negative and selfish then they will reflect our human desires and our self-centered character. If they are positive and generate a positive result for our lives and for others, then they reflect a God centered character. Our negative actions can carry consequences that further impact us negatively as well as those that we hurt from our actions. Our positive actions reflect the Light of Jesus Christ inside of us. That light of Truth should shine from our action so that others see Christ in us.

It is amazing that if you are in the daylight the dark corners and alleys are easy to see and avoid but if you are in complete darkness only a tiny point of light will be easily seen and attracting to us. God also works that way – The light of Christ can be easily seen no matter how dark the room we are in and the more light we have in our life the easier it is to avoid the dark corners and stay in the light.

⁵ The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never extinguish it.   John 1:5 NLT

God calls us to life of faithful actions that reflect His love thru our lives to others. These are the works of Faith and actions that we pray for in this New Year. May God bless us all with His light and may we reflect that light for the world so see each day.