The clock is ticking

Nine-tenths of wisdom is being wise in time. (Theodore Roosevelt)

For everything there is a season, a time for every activity under heaven. ...Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end. (Ecclesiastes 3:1, 11)

How do we use our time? Is it wisely, or a little too frivolously? Colossians 4:5 reminds us to make 'wise use of our time' - influencing all those who are 'outsiders' to the faith. Grace isn't something this world is accustomed to receiving, so when we reveal grace in and through our lives, we are being a positive influence on this hurting world. James reminds us we don't know what tomorrow will bring, so we had best be doing what God asks of us today, for none of us is assured a tomorrow. For everything there is a season. What season is upon you right now? I think God wants us to learn to take every activity, submit it to him, and then make the most of those activities.

God takes the things that happen within the space of time we call today to use them for many a tomorrow, regardless of whether we see tomorrow or not. We can be assured when we seek his plan for our day, then walk within that plan, those 'things' we accomplish will lay a foundation for what will happen tomorrow. We may not see the impact of a life lived well until much, much later. Every action we take today has an influence. Obedience isn't always going to be easiest choice, but each step God asks us to take today is meant for today, not tomorrow! We may think we can procrastinate with the things God asks us to do - yet there is no compromise in God's timing. 

Time is a fleeting thing - we don't hold it, nor can we make it last any longer. We may have one moment to make a right decision but feel ill-prepared for the decision at hand. Maybe this is why God emphasizes the importance of making time for him first - so we will be better prepared. If we get into God's Word, spend time in prayerful meditation upon what we have read, and just take a wee bit of time to listen to what he may want us to do, we might just redeem time a bit. God may ask us to 'do' something, but he could very well ask us to 'give' something. When we listen to his voice in this moment in time, we may just find his direction actually makes for a wise use of time indeed. Just sayin!

Temporary Residents

Temporary residents - this doesn't exactly indicate we will be staying very long, does it? I use a timeshare from time to time, getting away from the busy city life and getting a little closer to nature. I pack up all I will need for the week and then off we go. We settle into the place as though it were our own, but we know we are there for just the one week. We are 'temporary residents' in a very comfortable place, but it never really becomes our own. The furnishings are not as comfortable as those we have at home. The kitchen has most of the necessities, but we might not have all the things we would like to nosh on because we brought very specific things. It is 'home away from home' for us, but it isn't quite our long-term dwelling. I wonder if we treat this earth a little bit too much like our long-term dwelling, forgetting that we are just 'temporary residents' in this world - our long-term residency is with Christ!

And remember that the heavenly Father to whom you pray has no favorites. He will judge or reward you according to what you do. So you must live in reverent fear of him during your time here as “temporary residents.” For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. And it was not paid with mere gold or silver, which lose their value. It was the precious blood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God. God chose him as your ransom long before the world began, but now in these last days he has been revealed for your sake. Through Christ you have come to trust in God. And you have placed your faith and hope in God because he raised Christ from the dead and gave him great glory. You were cleansed from your sins when you obeyed the truth, so now you must show sincere love to each other as brothers and sisters. Love each other deeply with all your heart. (I Peter 1:17-22)

The ransom has been paid - to save us from the 'emptiness' of this life. If we were honest with ourselves and others, we probably might come to the conclusion that all the 'stuff' we amass and the things we 'do' to be 'comfortable' in this world are really masking just how 'uncomfortable' we are living apart from Christ. The 'long-term' has been paid for, so why on earth would we settle for anything 'temporary'? The enemy of our souls is hard at work attempting to keep our eyes off the 'eternal' in hopes he can persuade us to get wrapped up in the temporal. If he manages to get our eyes off the eternal long enough, he might just get us to believe that all this world has to offer is better than what Christ offers us both now and into eternity. That would indeed be a sad state of affairs.

We share this 'temporal' life with others - those who also have said 'yes' to Jesus. We also share it with a whole lot of others who have never acknowledged God as their Lord or Jesus as their Savior. Our purpose for living in the 'temporal' is to be a witness of the truth that has set us free to live beyond this world's confines. Our love for one another is to be a supreme example of grace - evidence of a life change and a 'change of focus'. We aren't just to 'love one another', but we are to do so with all our hearts. In a deep, genuine manner - seeing the needs around us, sharing the hope within us, and working to meet a need wherever possible. This is how faith is passed on - not just in the preaching of the Word on a Sunday morning from behind the pulpit - but in the everyday evidence of a life lived with a focus that sees clearly 'beyond this world'.

Obedience to Christ's commission is one of our responsibilities. We cannot positively exemplify the mission if we are so caught up in the temporal around us. We must remember that all that is before us here on earth is 'temporary'. Our 'permanent' stretches from here into eternity - something we might not fully understand today. Love today as though your tomorrow counted on what will be accomplished as a result of that loving action. You never know who you will be bringing along with you into eternity as a result of showing others where your heart is firmly anchored. Just sayin! 

Taking in the small stuff

"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever." 

(Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi) 

I may not have originated these words, but they are something which really reflects my heart. I live for today - because God never assures me I will have tomorrow here on this earth. I learn for an eternity - because God has assured me I will learn at his feet for all of eternity. There are certain things worth learning - such things make us stronger, giving us depth and breadth which would otherwise be undiscovered in our lives. Have you ever looked at an individual, considered what they "appear" to be like on the outside, and then made an "estimate" of their strength? If I see a guy who is muscular, with a great set of biceps bulging and firm six-pack, I think he must have spent a lot of time developing his strength. If I see a busy man in a business suit stop to help a small child explore the wonder of a snail crossing the sidewalk, I see a totally different kind of strength! There is much to be said about the difference between the outward "appearance" of strength and the inner assurance of strength. 

I ask him to strengthen you by his Spirit—not a brute strength but a glorious inner strength—that Christ will live in you as you open the door and invite him in. And I ask him that with both feet planted firmly on love, you’ll be able to take in with all followers of Jesus the extravagant dimensions of Christ’s love. Reach out and experience the breadth! Test its length! Plumb the depths! Rise to the heights! Live full lives, full in the fullness of God. (Ephesians 3:16-19)

It is what is on the inside which makes the man, not the display of what we see on the outside. Brute strength is good if you need to open a stubbornly sealed jar of pickles, but inner strength is even more awesome when you see it manifest in the ability to sense the opportunities that otherwise would be wasted if passed by. Brute strength is the result of consistent work-outs. Don't get me wrong, there is nothing bad about a good physique or a "tight" body, but if it is our ultimate goal, we miss something more valuable than rippled muscles and tight abs. Inner strength is "learned" - not as a result of "working out" in the gym, but in "working out" at the feet of Jesus - getting into his Word often enough to allow it to build 'spiritual muscle'. We have a "personal trainer" of sorts, better known as the Holy Spirit, just for the purpose of helping to develop this inner strength - this 'spiritual muscle' that will help us stand strong even when the pressures grow by the minute.

The strength of the inner man comes in looking first at where we plant our feet. If you have ever been in any athletic game such as baseball or basketball, you might have heard your coach tell you to "plant your feet". With this simple instruction, you are being urged to get a "stance" which will aid you in having the "base" or "foundation" upon which to build a solid hit, send a carefully calculated pass, or hit some mark down the course. Some believe having both feet solidly placed means you are not willing to try anything new. We are to plant our feet firmly on love - not human love, but the love of God which permeates us with the vastness of his grace. Where we "plant" our feet is as important as having them planted. It is in planting them solidly in his love where we begin to have the inner strength of our being expanded. We begin to experience the vastness of his love by getting to know the breadth of that love. Maybe this is best expressed in the promise from scripture: As far as east is from west—that’s how far God has removed our sin from us. (Psalm 103:12) 

Now that is some "breadth", isn't it? Think on it - as far as the east is from the west - this is how far God's love expands, for his love is the basis of all our sin being removed! We need to test its length. Part of experiencing something is to "test" it. In other words, you see if it endures, holds up under pressure. Explore the "lasting power" of God's love - it endures when nothing else does. Plumb the depth and rise to the heights of God's love. His love is found in the deepest sorrows of our soul and in the soaring "wins" of the mountain-top experiences. You know, it will take me an eternity to understand God's love fully - and even when I think I finally do understand it, I probably still won't. What I see and understand about his love only scratches the surface right now. My "finite" understanding is ever expanding, but I know it is limited by what I can see today, understand with my mind, and interpret with my emotion. In eternity, I will continue to learn at his feet. How about you? We need to truly learn to live for today - not letting the opportunities pass us by. The very "snail" we stop to observe could be the thing which leads us to the next great step in our lives! Just sayin!

So...what fulfills you?

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. (C.S. Lewis)

Did you ever stop to consider where you find your greatest discontent may also reveal to you where it is you will find your greatest contentment? If we are so disillusioned with our present world, I wonder if it is because we are desiring another world more? Is that a bad thing? Only if that 'other world' is one that leads us down a pathway away from God! If it is a pathway that draws us nearer to him, then it is not a bad thing at all! In fact, God's hope is that we will keep our attention clearly fixed on the hope of a future with him, while living effectively in this world by living in the present with him at the helm of our lives.

Belief begins in the heart and leads to a life that’s right with God; confession departs from our lips and brings eternal salvation. Because what Isaiah said was true: “The one who trusts in Him will not be disgraced.” Remember that the Lord draws no distinction between Jew and non-Jew—He is Lord over all things, and He pours out His treasures on all who invoke His name because as Scripture says, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” (Romans 10:10-13)

As we go through life, we experiment with all kinds of things and ventures - trying to fill some void in ourselves. Whether it be a void we think will be filled when someone loves us enough, or we will have no void left when we reach a certain amount built up in our savings accounts, the void will always demand to be filled. Learning which void demands to be filled with anything other than what God designs to fill that void is the only way to ensure we are not being 'filled' with things that will only yield further 'emptiness' in our lives.

As I was carrying my children in the womb, the doctor's always asked me to abide by a healthy diet - one that was free of 'empty calories'. Why? Those chips may have tasted good at the moment, but did very little to aid in the growth and development of the life within. We sometimes try to satisfy an urge or need with 'empty calories' in a spiritual sense, too. We think we can get fulfillment apart from how God tells us he brings fulfillment, all the while oblivious to how 'empty' our pursuit will leave us feeling in the end. 

Fullness isn't found in the here and now. To be truly fulfilled, we need to be keeping our eyes on eternity. Eternity holds the only true fulfillment. We can be satisfied to some extent here on this earth, simply because we live here and now with Christ at the center of all we do. We can be fully satisfied by remembering we are called to fulfill a greater purpose than what we realize on this earth! Just sayin!

Impotent or Important?

When we were utterly helpless, with no way of escape, Christ came at just the right time and died for us sinners who had no use for him. Even if we were good, we really wouldn’t expect anyone to die for us, though, of course, that might be barely possible. But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. (Romans 5:6-8 TLB)

What would you do for someone who 'under-valued' you, having little to no use for you? Most of us would be honest here and say we'd do very little, if anything at all! Why? We live in a world that expects reciprocity! We look for the 'what's in it for me' situations and that is what we go after more than those 'even if it means nothing for me, I will do it anyway' moments. Honestly, we want to 'get' a little out of whatever we 'put into' something, don't we? This is only natural. It is something quite supernatural to give without any expectation of getting!

Helpless people are really powerless. The helplessness isn't that we lack courage or even the 'want to', but that we lack the power to make something happen. We have been 'incapacitated' - we lack the capacity to do whatever needs to be done. A similar word to helpless is impotent - we are inadequate in completing whatever lays before us. The idea here is that we were unable - there was absolutely no way for us to ever make ourselves right with God again. We were without any way of escape - bound by our sin and shame, linked to our past mistakes and failures.

Now, you would think that someone who lacks the capacity to escape - being held in a place of bondage - would want to be free, wouldn't you? Do you know it is quite possible for someone in bondage to become so 'used to' the bondage that they don't even look for freedom any longer? There might be a niggling of desire now and again, but since the bondage has become so much the 'norm', the motivation to try to be free just isn't there any longer. Maybe this is why scripture points out we had 'no use' for Christ. We just didn't see the purpose of a Savior any longer - we had become resigned to our lack of freedom and just didn't see any way out.

Even those who live 'really good lives' have no real way of escaping the fact they were born sinners. The nature to sin is inherent in our genetic make-up. We will eventually compromise, no matter how 'good' we are. The need for Christ's sacrificial death may not even cross our minds because we are working out our own 'destiny' via our 'good deeds', but the truth is that our own destiny won't even get us close to an eternity in God's presence! We need what we don't even know we need - a Savior. 

It is good news that our eternity isn't limited by what we value or what we can do for ourselves. If we counted on these two things to draw us close to God's heart, we'd still be miles and miles away in the end. Just sayin!

You making your own path?

Have you ever been the first one to blaze a trail through freshly fallen snow?  The pristine, unblemished look of that mounded whiteness just beckons us to cut a path through it, fall down into it, and mound it up into a creation of magical delight.  The first set of footprints leaves only small impressions where your foot came to rest with each step, doesn't it?  The more the same steps are followed - either by your own movement or that of others - the more a "path" begins to be worn.  The original footprints are still there, but they are underneath all the others which have passed over the same spot.  In time, we come to call this a path - the route which has become the place of movement and passage.  I want us to begin to think of what Christ did on our behalf as he took the first steps into an eternity of grace on our behalf.  Eternity's "grace" path began with one set of footprints, and down through the ages, by others following in those footprints, eternity's "grace" pathway has been followed over and over again.  

I am the path, the truth, and the energy of life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. If you know Me, you know the Father. Rest assured now; you know Him and have seen Him. (John 14:6-7 VOICE)

Lots of us choose to follow no other set of footprints, no matter how well the path has been marked out through the ages, wanting instead to blaze a trail all of our own.  The excitement of being the first to go where others have not is something which just excites us and energizes us in ways which are kind of hard for us to understand.  It is this tendency to want to do things our way - being the one who leads the path of our own destiny - which will end in us missing out on the pathway of grace.  It could not be clearer - Jesus is the path - he is the one who walked that "grace" path - establishing not only the pathway we are to follow, but the means by which we can actually take those steps.  All other paths we could travel in our own deliberate "trail-blazing" activities in life are simply not going to take us to the same destination.  There is but one pathway to the destination of an eternity of grace.

Probably the most telling part of this passage is to understand the meaning of "path".  A pathway is actually a very narrow walkway.  It isn't blazed with a bulldozer, but with one set of footprints.  It is kind of like when that snow is first marked with the set of footprints another may follow in, then another, and another, until finally it becomes that narrow path which makes its way to a destination point.  In the case of eternity, Christ's footprints lead right into the throne room of God himself.  Jesus said there are three things we need to recognize about this path:

1) There is but one path.  He is that path.  No other means exists to ensure eternity is lived out in grace.  Grace is not available by any set of works, litany of prayers, or determined existence of "saintly" pursuits.  We might try to make a path of our own making, but in time, it isn't going to lead to the same destination as that which Christ has prepared for each of us. On the day Jesus spoke these words to his disciples, he also told them the path he was blazing was to his Father's home - a place he was going to in order to prepare for their arrival.  The first person to go to a destination is the one who does the work of laying out the means by which someone will arrive at the destination.  All others who follow the trail will arrive where the trail leads.  This is important for us to understand - there is but one trail which leads to an eternity of grace and that is the path created by Christ alone.

2) Those who travel this path don't live by speculation, or guess about which turn to take - for the path is one which is true and the markers along the path are all found in the truth of his words.  Truth keeps us from having to speculate about how to live, or which way to follow when decisions present themselves.  Truth establishes evidence of the right path and then marks out the path with clarity and with determined progress toward the destination. I have taken many a trail through national forests and have been delighted to see each and every one of those small markers which tell me I am on the right path to the destination I seek at the end of that trail.  If I just ventured into the unknown of the forests without the evidence of those markers to guide me along the way, my travels could be very tumultuous, could they not?  Christ is the truth - he marks the trail with clarity and light. 

3) The path isn't followed in our own strength, but by the energy of life which emanates from Christ himself.  Too many times we think this pathway of grace is something we walk in our own strength, but the purpose of walking in the footprints of another is quite different than blazing our own trail.  When we walk "inside" the footprints of someone who has gone through the snow drifts ahead of us, do we exert the same amount of energy as when we carefully follow the footprints of another who has gone before?  No, because stepping into the footprint of another doesn't require us to push away the things which act as resistance in our lives - the resistance has been "navigated" for us.  We burn out when it is always us trying to blaze the trail, my friends.  

We can be the ones to blaze the trail to somewhere in our lives, but trust me on this, that path will not be the one to an eternity of grace.  Grace has but one path, narrow, but already navigated.  We simply place one foot in front of the other, stepping INTO what Christ has already done on our behalf, then walk on into the place prepared for each of us in the very presence of the eternal God himself.  One path - one truth - one energizing force.  The way could not be clearer.  Just sayin!

It is not a cake walk!

¹² Of the land that we possessed at that time, I gave the Reubenites and the Gadites the territory north of Aroer along the Brook Arnon and half the hill country of Gilead with its towns.  ¹³ I gave the half-tribe of Manasseh the rest of Gilead and all of Bashan, Og's kingdom—all the region of Argob, which takes in all of Bashan. This used to be known as the Land of the Rephaites.
(Deuteronomy 3:12-13)

Two and a half tribes belonging to the nation of Israel decided that they wanted to stay on the "wilderness-side" of the territory when the rest of Israel was forging ahead into the promised land.  Isn't that so like us sometimes - good things are right there in front of us, but we choose our place of familiarity over the unfamiliar!  We want what we have come to understand instead of what we might have to work a little harder to really "get".  

We often stop just "short" of what God designs for us.  Instead of being willing to take that extra step or go a little further, we shrink back.  In today's vernacular, we call that "settling".  If there is anything I have learned in my years on this earth, it is this - God's "best" is not part of "settling".  Yes, the land the Reubenites, Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh "settled for" was sufficient to meet the needs of their families.  It just wasn't all God had intended for them!

Settling for what we can see and touch is often not best for us - it is just easiest.  Think about it - how much easier is it to open a bag of chips and nosh than to fix a salad and really get some positive nutrients into our system?  Those who entered into the promised land were indeed facing some battles and challenges.  Their entry and possession of God's blessings would not be a "cake walk".  The journey would be hard, but the rewards would be great.  

Provision was made for each of these battles - as long as they kept God in right perspective (as the one true Lord).  Protection was assured - as long as their eyes were fixed (on the one true Lord).  By choosing not to "settle" in a place of comfort, they were given a place of reward.  Years later, they'd build the temple, celebrating all things good, remembering all things bad, thanking God for the journey.

On the other hand, Moses wanted more than anything to go into the Promised Land - to experience first-hand the enjoyment of it.  Yet, he never would experience that opportunity.  He got them there, but he would not go in with them.  He saw the blessing, but he never partook of it.  He heard the reports, but he never got to make them his life-story.  He had experienced so much of God's wonders already, but the enjoyment that laid ahead for the nation of Israel was not to be his.

Today, we can make the choice to "settle" for what we think is best - or we can be focused on what God has just around the corner.  The choice is ours - what we do with our choice determines our outcomes!