What Really Matters

Remember the t-shirts that had the message: “______________ is life, the rest is just details” written on it?

It is not uncommon for people to have one or two passions that dominate their lives.

Some live as if football is life and others live as if politics were life and still others live as if family were life. We have a tendency to make something the focal point of our lives. 

Disciples of Jesus need to recognize our tendency to elevate a passion to the ultimate position in our lives. It could be a good thing like family and career or it could be a destructive thing like drugs and partying. 

It doesn’t matter what it is. What matters is that we recognize our ability to do this.

Perhaps that is one of the reasons Paul’s prayer for the Philippians is for knowledge and understanding: Paul wanted his readers to know what really mattered in life. 

For Paul what mattered in life wasn’t whether or not the Republicans controlled the government, who was going to play in the Super Bowl, how much you weigh, or the amount of money you make. 

It is not that these things don't matter, but at most they are secondary issues.What ultimately matters is the way we live. 

In other words, Paul wanted to make sure that his readers lived lives that represented Jesus and honored God.

This is hard to do. 

We usually think in terms of how we can avoid bringing dishonor to God’s name. Trying not to dishonor God is not the same as intentionally doing things that glorify Him. 

I think this is where many of us are at in our walk with Jesus. 

We are satisfied with trying not to sin, trying to avoid what God prohibits, and we miss truly demonstrating God's character to the world. We are content with not hating our neighbor rather than truly loving him.

What we need is a shirt that says, “Following Jesus is life. The rest is just details.”

Following Jesus through the ups and downs of life is the way we demonstrate his character in this world. 

That is precisely what we are created to do.

One Priority

One of the blessings of living in an affluent society such as the United States is that we have many options to choose from. We have options for what career to pursue, for the food that we eat, for the luxury items in our homes, and for the friends that we have. We are not stuck with one option, and most of the time that is a good thing.

One of the curses of living in an affluent society is the choices that we have. The result of all these choices is that many of us in the United States are overwhelmed with our lives. We lack the proper tools needed to navigate the thousands of choices that life offers us. We are also ill equipped to deal with the consequences of those choices.

On the outside it appears like we are living the “American Dream”, but on the inside our hearts and minds are cluttered with worry, fear, hopelessness, and envy. Instead of living the full and abundant life that Jesus promised his followers, we live lives of dissatisfaction and desperation.

Finish reading at Paul's Ponderings: One Priority

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Linkage: How Do You Keep From Getting Distracted?

We can feel important when someone asks us for help, and therefore it is easy to lay aside our agendas so we can help that person.  The problem is that each of these pleas for help can begin to distract us from what we need to be doing.  There needs to be a balance in our lives in finding time to help people and doing those things that God has called us to do.  Sometimes those two things line up, and other times they don't.  Jesus didn't stay in one place to help all the people in that community, because His call was larger than that, and so He travelled around helping people when He could.  Similarly we need to be aware of what God has called us to do and make those things a priority, as well as making sure we find time to help those people who ask us for help.

Don Miller has post on his blog that deals with this issue:

A few weeks ago I was tempted to put off a high-priority job because somebody needed something from me and said it was urgent. The truth is what they needed from me was urgent, it just wasn’t urgent for me. What they needed was going to help them get their job done. 

I call these kinds of distractions a “ringing phone.” It’s amazing how much a ringing phone takes priority over everything else, and often the stuff that is more important given your various responsibilities. When a phone rings we rarely know what the person who is calling wants, but we drop whatever we are doing to answer.

Continue reading How Do You Keep From Getting Distracted? Don’t Answer the Ringing Phone.

Aligning Our Lives to God's Will

“The places we go, the friendships we embrace, the language we use, the shows we watch, the books we read, the thoughts we entertain—all must be aligned with the purpose to which we are called by God.” ~ Ravi Zacharias, Cries of the Heart

There is importance to the things we do every day. The choices we make about where we go and the people we spend time with affect who we are and what we accomplish with our lives. The decisions we make concerning the every day choices we face either help us or hinder us in living out God’ purpose for our lives.

God has created us for a purpose. So many of us miss out on that purpose because we get caught in the busy-ness flow of life. Discovering the specific purpose of our lives (the general purpose for everyone is to love God and to love people) requires a decision to step out of the current of society to follow Jesus wherever He decides to lead us. The choices we make everyday must reflect our desire to follow Jesus, and thus our purpose for life begins to take shape.

This means we need to become more discriminating in how we live our lives. More thought needs to be put into what movies we watch. Better discernment is needed in who we have as our closest friends. Holiness and purity must flow from our hearts and minds. We will never be able to live out our God given purpose if we remain within the stream of culture.

We need to be different. Not so much different in the way we look, but different in the choices we make. Our lives must be aligned to God’s will, and in the end that will make us different. The prophet Isaiah reminds us, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD” (Isaiah 55:8; NLT). By choosing to follow Jesus and to live according to God’s plan, we will be different because God’s ways are different than the ways of man.

As we follow Jesus our priorities change. Luke records these encounters people had with Jesus.

As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” And Jesus said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Yet another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:57-62; ESV).

What Jesus makes clear is that His priorities are different from the priorities of other people. The priorities of these men weren’t necessarily sinful, but these earthly priorities did prevent the men from making a full commitment to Christ. The Kingdom of God isn’t about houses, jobs, and families, rather it is about doing what King Jesus has asked us to do. It is changing from what we believe to be important to what the King says is important. The entire scope of our lives need to be aligned to God’s will.  This is exactly the way Jesus lived His life.

It is hard to give up the control of our lives and surrender to Jesus. Yet, the way we discover true life is to align our purpose for living with God’s will for our lives. Only by doing God’s will do we discover what it means to truly live.