I awoke from a dream. In the dream I was embracing my family and crying out to my father who walked by outside of the window. All I was saying was, "I love them. I love them. I love them." So much is wrapped up in those words. But it seemed like the emphasis at that moment was that I wanted to have more time to show them my love for them. I didn't want my love to be cheapened due to lack of time. As he walked by, he looked back and nodded and said, "I know. But it was more like he was saying, "I know your pain." The most precious thing we have is life. Life doesn't start when certain things happen in an embryo. That life started in the love of parents. And that life started in the Garden of Eden when God knelt down and gave a lump of dirt mouth to mouth. Life comes from God. Not only do we have a most precious thing, we have a way to measure it. We call it time. Man was created to never die. Yet there was still a way of marking time. Before man was created, God created the sun, moon, and heavenly bodies to help us keep time. Time was apparently created for humans. I don't know if God created time because he knew death would enter the world, or just as an interesting and helpful element for us to use. Though time has no bearing in eternity. It has immense consequences for eternity. It is an interesting thing for sure. Time works against us. In the beginning of our lives we don't realize how valuable time is. But as it runs from us, we begin to understand how rare a commodity it is. Time, like everything has been defined. Webster says time is, "the measured or measurable period during which an action, process, or condition exists or continue." The most valuable commodity man has sure does sound sterile, doesn't it. Yet, that's it. Time is what it is. It is limited, and it is mysterious. We didn't know when our time would begin, and neither do we know when it will end. So how do we live in that time? Well, it would be nice to be wise with that most valuable possession. In fact Moses spoke this prayer that is recorded in the Psalms... Our lives last seventy years or, if we are strong, eighty years. Even the best of them are struggle and sorrow; indeed, they pass quickly and we fly away. Who understands the power of Your anger? Your wrath matches the fear that is due You. Teach us to number our days carefully so that we may develop wisdom in our hearts. Lord—how long? Turn and have compassion on Your servants. Satisfy us in the morning with Your faithful love so that we may shout with joy and be glad all our days. Make us rejoice for as many days as You have humbled us, for as many years as we have seen adversity. (Psalms 90:10-15) That is sobering, but it is also instructive. Smack dab in the middle of that slap of reality is the phrase, "Teach us to number our days carefully so that we may develop wisdom in our hearts." What an interesting statement. We are to number our days. How can we number them? We don't know how long we will be here. How do you count air? It is a mystery. Well, maybe that is it. Maybe we aren't to know how many days we have, or have left. What if numbering our days is not so much about counting them as making them count? God already knows how many minutes we will have. We don't know, nor can we determine how many minutes we will have. But we can make sure our life is full of moments. Traveling in England recently, I noticed on their old grave markers that they used a phrase. When someone died, it would tell when their earthly life began, and when it ended. But then it would also use the phrase, "They died in the 39th year of their age." When we think of an age, we think of an extended period of time, like the Bronze Age, or the Stone Age. But each person lives an entire age. You have an age. It may seem short or it may seem long, but it is your age. Your age isn't just a number that represents the time you have been breathing on this revolving ball of rock and water. Your age is your time. This is your age. How ever old you are, you are living in your age. You aren't living in the space age. You are living in your age. You will die at the end of your age. You will determine how wisely you will live in your age. So count them. Realize they are diminishing. And then make them count. Some things don't matter. Be wise. Figure out what doesn't matter. Lose it. You are losing time. Better to lose what doesn't matter in order to enhance what does matter. Doing stuff is fun and good. But doing what matters is most important. Be wise. The apostle Paul wrote to the early Christians, "Pay careful attention, then, to how you walk—not as unwise people but as wise— making the most of the time, because the days are evil." (Ephesians 5:15-16) You now have less time available than you did when you started reading this. Today you will have today. They say it is the first day of the rest of your life. You may have been wise up to this point. You may not have been. Regardless, you can live wisely from now through the end of your age. Make it count. This is an absolutely free resource. If you would like to support us, you can give via the above link. The video below is associated with the topic. It is Sunday morning. Many Christians will be going to worship with other believers today, if they haven't already. Sunday morning worship is a mix of those who are welcoming a child, sitting with those who are burying a child. A row of worshippers may contain a person who just received a promotion as well as someone who was fired on Friday. A musician on the music team may have just received a report of cancer from the doctor while the pastor's wife just got a clean bill of health. It is impossible to worship apart from our feelings. Feelings aren't bad. God gave them to us. But feelings are not the most important element of our existence. Feelings can be both a stabilizing force, and an impressionable foe. Like any other part of our humanity, our feelings need to be sanctified by the fire of the Holy Spirit. But since they are near the surface, our feelings are sensitive, and easily touched off. On a day when many people with varied feelings gather to worship a God who has allowed or caused many types of situations to arise and test the faith of His people, it can be a dangerous and difficult environment. To the one who is struggling, know that God is not struggling. He is working. He is loving. He is listening. He is hurting with you. And yet, He is winning. And through Him, you win. You may be struggling, hurting, falling, and dying. But you are winning. You are victorious. The enemy seems to be gaining on you, but he is defeated. The brokenness you are dealing with is the ruin of sin. But we know that sin and death have been crushed by the One who endured more brokenness than we will ever endure. As the Psalmist penned... Shout triumphantly to the Lord, all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness; come before Him with joyful songs. Acknowledge that Yahweh is God. He made us, and we are His — His people, the sheep of His pasture. Enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise. Give thanks to Him and praise His name. For Yahweh is good, and His love is eternal; His faithfulness endures through all generations. (Psalms 100) The word 'feel' shows up in Scripture about 20 times. The word 'know' shows up about 1220 times. Apparently what you feel is not as important as what you know. Today, you need to stand on what you know, not fall by what you feel. Here is an anchor truth for you today... God is victorious. We are His kids. We are in His kingdom. We live in His house. We have His inheritance. So we are victorious. If you are a Christian, you are victorious, regardless of your circumstances, because circumstances are not eternal. They will be entirely different next Sunday. But Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever. He has always been victorious. There has never been a moment when Jesus was not victorious. Those who are in Christ have what He has. So His victory is your victory... whether you feel victorious or not. It isn't that God doesn't care about your feelings. He just wants you to trust Him more than you trust them. This is just as true for the one who rides into church today on a chariot of blessings. Everything may be going great in your life. Your tears may be tears of overwhelming joy. There's nothing wrong with that. God is the giver of every good and perfect gift. A season of abundance is not bad if it is from God. He loves to bless His children. Just be sure that you are worshiping the God of blessings rather than the blessings themselves. The temporal is a siren that would crash us on the rocks of loss or draw us into the sea of lust. We are not temporal. Our bodies are temporal, but the life we have is eternal. We honor the eternal by surrendering the temporal. We bless the temporal by living according to the eternal. Today, recognize your feelings, but rise and rest in truth. Shout triumphantly to the Lord, for you are triumphant in Him. Sing joyfully to the Source of your joy. Acknowledge God for Who He is, and who you are in Him. Praise Him for His faithful goodness, love and care. This is an absolutely free resource. If you would like to support us, you can give via the above link. The video below is associated with the topic. Work is often hard. If you are doing it right, it will certainly have difficult elements. Work is so hard that some people decide they can't, or won't do it. That's not good. We were designed to work, to be creative, to make things, to be productive. Work is a 'four-letter word', but it is a good four letter word, like love, or life, or food. Work was probably always supposed to require effort, even before the fall in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were caretakers of the Earth. That is no small task. But once you add the brokenness of sin and death into a large task, it takes on certain elements of difficulty that make it unbearable at times. God told Adam that after the rebellion he would earn his living by the sweat of his brow, and the Earth would not yield as freely as planned. Adam had been working before he sinned. But after he broke relationship with God, that work was not as fruitful. It became a lifelong struggle. And it is to this day. In fact, the farther we go, the more difficult work seems to be, and the more it takes from our life. A warning you may hear from time to time is, "Don't be so busy making a living that you don't have time to make a life." I don't even think I have to explain that. It is obvious. For most of history work was difficult. It was a large part of life, and most people were happy if their work could provide the basics. If it provided for luxuries, that was icing on the cake. Then in the 20th century, automation made it so that we didn't have to work as hard at many jobs. It also meant we could produce more stuff. At the same time there was a shift in thinking that the amount of stuff you had somehow defined your own value and worth. So people began working longer hours, not to meet their needs, but to serve their wants... to have more luxury. In many ways, the pursuit of a more wealthy lifestyle replaced the pursuit of a healthy lifestyle. Now both parents were working, even though the second working spouse rarely earns enough to justify the expense of her working once all of the new costs are added in. The race to earn more that could be spent on extra stuff became the goal rather than earning enough to be able to create a stable home life. In fact, we redefined the dream. The dream used to be time with family. The dream became stuff for family. There was an idea that because we had machines working for us, we would eventually move from working 5 days a week to only laboring 3 days a week. Instead, the beast of work now often requires 6 or 7 days a week... and why? So we can buy expensive coffees and clothes we will never wear? Shopping has become the new family time. We spend money like we used to spend time. And work has become the end... not the means to an end. God created us to be creative. But in that creation He instilled a valuable principle. He spent 6 days creating the universe. Then on the seventh day He rested from all of His labors. He is our Father, so I think He thought that His kids would just copy Him. But of course we were 'those kids', and didn't. So He spelled it our specifically at various times. "Take one day a week and do not work. Rest from your labors. Set it aside. Rest. REST. R.E.S.T." He knew this about us... we were created to produce. That's good. He made that true. But in a fallen world, our ability to produce would be corrupted and exaggerated by sin. This would be bad. Even before sin He gave us a pattern of rest. How much more important would that be after death entered us. Yet here we are, losing the rat race, in debt up to our hairline, trying to impress our friends with our lifestyle, and we are losing our minds, and our families to the wallet monster. What we need to realize is that the wallet monster doesn't just eat our money. He eats our clock... our time... the most valuable and limited element we have. We need to starve the wallet monster. And one way you do that is to rest. Rest is hard work. I know... that sounds strange, but think about it. Rest is hard work. Isn't that true? Does rest come natural, or do you have to schedule it? Do you have to put some things in place to make it happen? Does something always come off to take you away from rest? Can you truly rest, or do your mind and body easily drift to doing? After your time of rest, do you feel like you need a vacation? I'm not saying that work is bad, or we rid our lives of it. But we need balance. And anytime we do not have balance, we are one step away from a fall. Balance in this area is difficult. The enemy does not want what we need to come easy. Sometimes it is a battle to find work. Satan will work in that. Other times it is a battle to find rest. Satan does not discriminate. He will work in that as well. Anything to keep us off balance. The word 'work' is found about 620 times in the Bible. The word 'rest' is found about 600 times. Talk about balance... I encourage you to fight hard to make rest as natural in your life as you do with other important things. The Bible tells us that if a man does not work, he shouldn't eat. I'm here to tell you that if you don't rest, you will not enjoy the working or the eating. Put rest in its proper place. Seek rest. For when you seek rest, you seek the best. Work is good, but rest is rare. And what is more rare is more valuable. By the seventh day God completed His work that He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work that He had done. God blessed the seventh day and declared it holy, for on it He rested from His work of creation. (Genesis 2:2-3) If God rests, so should we. Fight for rest. Work hard for it. The rewards of rest will bless your efforts in work. Yes... work is a four letter word. But so is rest. Say it today. This is an absolutely free resource. If you would like to support us, you can give via the above link. The video below is associated with the topic. There is much diversity in the world. Even within the Church there are great differences. Some of our differences are worth arguing over because they are divisive and lead away from Christ. But there are many things that separate us which are not worth dividing us. It has been said that good fences make good neighbors. The Christian community is not filled with clones. Within the body of Christ there are differences we can and must live with. We are a family of unity, not uniformity. I literally cannot list all of the areas where there are livable differences. But perhaps you can look at some of these thoughts from the apostle Paul and see the application in today's experience. Don’t argue about doubtful issues. Each one must be fully convinced in his own mind. For none of us lives to himself, and no one dies to himself. If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord. Therefore, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. Christ died and came to life for this: that He might rule over both the dead and the living. But you, why do you criticize your brother? Or you, why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before the tribunal of God. Each of us will give an account of himself to God. Therefore, let us no longer criticize one another. Instead decide never to put a stumbling block or pitfall in your brother’s way. We must pursue what promotes peace and what builds up one another. Do you have a conviction? Keep it to yourself before God. All of this comes from Romans chapter 14. Paul is helping Christian deal with various personal convictions within the Church that can divide, but should not. They had some people who would not eat certain kinds of food because they believed God had called them to abstain. Others did not have the same leading. Others believed they should observe certain days of celebration and worship while others did not have specific leading and treated all days the same. This was causing division. Food and holidays were causing division in the Church. Satan really doesn't care how he divides Christians, as long as he does. He will use anything. Sound familiar? Today there are cultural things and even religious elements that cause separation and even division. Some people believe strongly one way. Others, another way. Personal convictions are important. It is part of our 'working out our salvation in fear and trembling.' Personal convictions are evidence that God is a personal God. They help keep us all accountable. Even if you don't hold to a certain conviction, the conviction of another can cause you to think about values and priorities. A personal conviction is supposed to be a point of principle, but can easily become a point of pride. It is supposed to be an extension of a personal relationship with God, but can easily become an extinguisher of relationships with people. It is supposed to be a way of enhancing a walk of holiness, but can easily become a wall of division between brothers and sisters. God gives us personal convictions to separate us from sin not saints. Instead of simply being convinced in our own minds of how God wants us to walk out our faith, we end up trying to convince others that they must hold to our convictions, and in the process walk over their faith. At that point, our personal convictions are of no worth. If God calls you to live a certain way, live it out. As God's people, we should live out our personal convictions in a way that is appealing... not appalling. Today you will have the opportunity to see someone else's conviction and pray that God will build them up through it, or be offended and try to argue them out of it. Treat them and their convictions like you want them to treat you and your convictions. God gave us our convictions. Let's not misuse them, or the people holding them. We are not here to be convincers, but Christians. DISCLAIMER - Usually I deal with a topic and then post a verse or passage in context to show how the Bible speaks to that topic. Today I admittedly picked verses from a passage that dealt with the topic, but leaving other verses out. I was not trying to force the passage, or misuse the verses for my own purposes. The Biblical context was very specific to a certain application, but the principle is broad enough to touch our lives today. This is an absolutely free resource. If you would like to support us, you can give via the above link. The video below is associated with the topic. Sometimes I sit back, look at the lives of other people and think, "Wow... that's an awesome life." It isn't difficult to do. There are many wonderful things to experience. In this world, there are amazing things to do, and great things to be. But to be completely honest, my life has been fantastic. I've been blessed with a really good life. I have the most exceptional family. God has blessed me with talents and opportunities. I enjoy my friends. My needs are met, and many of my wants are as well. I suppose there are others who may look at my life and think, "Wow... that's an awesome life." There's a good chance someone reading this will think, "Well, my life isn't so awesome." You may be tempted to wish you had someone else's experience. That is not healthy, and it is likely unnecessary. Just think about your life. Think about the most valuable parts of your life. Think about those people you couldn't do without. Think about those memories that get you through the worst times. Think about those experiences you wouldn't exchange for any amount of money. Think about your dreams... those hopes you have that nobody else knows about. See? You really do have an awesome life. I'm not trying to say everything in your life is awesome. I am not trying to make all lives equal. I'm just saying that there is much for which we should be thankful. But with all of that awesomeness, there is something greater. If you have given your life to Christ, and have come to know Him, there is nothing that compares to that. I don't care how much money you have, or how many places you've visited. I don't care how much talent you have, or who you know. It all pales in comparison to our relationship with Christ. The apostle Paul had a pretty amazing life. Even before coming to know Christ he was top of the class. But when dealing with this topic, he put it this way in a letter to what was likely the first church in Europe... Everything that was a gain to me, I have considered to be a loss because of Christ. More than that, I also consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Because of Him I have suffered the loss of all things and consider them filth, so that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own from the law, but one that is through faith in Christ—the righteousness from God based on faith. My goal is to know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, assuming that I will somehow reach the resurrection from among the dead. (Philippians 3:7-11) How much value is there in knowing Christ? All of my accomplishments are nothing in light of the value of knowing Christ. Even the greatest thing I've ever done is nothing compared to knowing Jesus. It isn't even a close second. Knowing my Savior dwarfs everything. We aren't talking about knowing Jesus as an historical figure. This is knowing Him as the most integral part of our existence. Many people spend their life trying to accomplish "the greatest thing," not realizing that they are only accomplishing the equivalent of nothing... compared to the actual greatest thing... knowing Jesus Christ. The most successful people I know are the ones who know Christ. Even among those who are successful by human standards, those who have a true and deep relationship with Jesus will quickly tell you that the achievements of this world are worth nothing compared to having that experience of Christ. Christians who are wealthy in this world will tell you in a heartbeat that they would give away their wealth in order to have one of their lost family members come to know Christ. This is not to make you feel better about being a Christian who is a slacker in the material realm. God appreciates excellent effort and effectively using the gifts He has given you to accomplish great and creative things as He gives you opportunity. This is simply a realignment of value. The enemy doesn't care how many trophies you get in your career. In fact, if more trophies could diminish your relationship with Christ, Satan will keep them coming. Congrats on your accomplishments... really. I wish I was as successful as you. But please do not miss the nest in pursuit of the good. We need to stop comparing our things that don't matter with other people's things that don't matter, and start comparing everything to that which matters above all else. Today you will have the opportunity to lose sight of the greatest things as you deal with the important things. Be thankful for every blessing. But do not forget that after the confetti has been swept up, there is a Redeemer who has bought you with His own blood. He knows you inside and out, and still loves you. He is working His will into your life. He has given you the chance and ability to save the world. Everything else might be nice and good. But He is best. This is an absolutely free resource. If you would like to support us, you can give via the above link. The video below is associated with the topic. |
AuthorMy name is David, and I want to know God more, and help other people find Him. Archives
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