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Our life is but a breathe.
In one breathe we were created.
And in one breathe we will be gone from this earth.
And yet God loved us enough to breathe life into us.
I evaluated my thinking recently and was amazed just how fair away I am from God. Here is what I was thinking. I started my day by getting gas and I was standing at the end of the line waiting to pay, while I hear the cashier speaking to the person at the head of line. The cashier, obviously not from this country, had a hard time speaking English and I thought to myself, “Man, I wish they hire someone who was from this country, who could speak English better”.
Then once I got back in my vehicle, I mapped out all that I had to do that day. But once I arrived at work I was bombarded with a list of things that had to be done, none of them was what I had in mind. So I thought to myself; “that’s typical, now I can not accomplish anything I wanted to get done, now I will be playing catch up all week”.
Now here’s the kicker, I’m done with work driving to a friends house to help him do something, when I am stopped at a red light and there to my left is a dirty man holding a cardboard sign that reads “out of work, will work for food”. I look away as not to make eye contact with him and think that there’s work for him, he just isn’t looking hard enough or he is probably just a drunk wanting a hand out.
These experiences from one day are typical of the thoughts that inhabit my mind time after time and you know what? I am sick of them. I want to be more like my Savior, I want to think more like Him. What I lack is the heart of Jesus. And here is the scary thing, it is scary to begin to see the truth about our own thoughts and its need to be cleansed.
I imagine having a mind more like Christ, freed from all the derby that blocks my best intentions. What would it be like if the first time I saw a person I started to pray for them? What if instead of getting upset at how my day turned out I thanked God for the ability to work and thanked Him that I still have a job in this economy? What if I looked at that man standing on the street corner and did not pass judgment on him, but offered to take him to MacDonald’s?
That’s what it would look like to have the mind of Christ. That’s what it would look like to be immersed in the scriptures. The Bible teaches us how to live the kingdom in the here and now. I have never known someone who was truly spiritual in the truest sense who had not been deeply immersed in the word.
So this week I am trying to be more like Christ, by being more in the word of God, by trying to have more of the thoughts of Christ and less of my own. This week begins the second week of the Advent Season, where we start thinking of the birth of our Savior and what He has done for us. What better way to start this Advent Season than to think more like Him.
There’s just something about being in a group or club that cost you something. When I was in college, I belonged to a fraternity and it felt good to belong to a group that not everyone was a part of. Anyone that knows anything about fraternities of sororities knows that you have to be sponsored be someone already in the group that vouches for you and they say that you would be an excellent addition to our group. However, this does not guarantee a spot in the group. First, you must rush, in my case for a week, where your fellow brothers, as they are known, can get you to do pretty much whatever they want. Then they drill you with questions in an interview and if they like you, you’re in! You are now part of the brotherhood! You’re a big dog on campus now. You’re part of an exclusive group that many want to be a part of and yet only a few ever get to opportunity to join.
Not much has really changed since my days as a member of the Phi Simga Cia fraternity. Yes, I am no longer a college student who likes to hang with my brethren, but I am part of another exclusive group, the church. In many ways, the church feels a lot like my fraternity, for we have the tendency to be exclusive as well.
Many members of the church world will call themselves the insiders and they want to separate themselves from the outsiders. We don’t dare say we’re exclusive, but it’s how we act that gives that perception. We have set in place external practices that separate us from the outsiders – our vocabulary or dress, who we associate with, and so on.
We have become proud and judgmental toward the outsiders. We often pride ourselves on how righteous we are, so much so that we can just look at someone and tell right away whether they are an insider or outsider. However, with Jesus, the leader of the church, this wasn’t the case at all. His messages and mission was to have everyone be an insider. Not just to belong to an elite group of people that are super spiritual, but to belong to a group of people that wanted to be transformed into “new creatures”. Jesus didn’t focus on what someone looked like or how they acted, rather he looked at the persons heart.
I have been a part of some wonderful churches in my life and every one of them has added to my spiritual walk with Christ. Nevertheless, each one of them, some more than others, had their own bench markers. Some of them could have had a pastor consumed with pride and was a glutton, but as he was growing or at least maintaining the church, he need not worry about his job. But if by chance a church member saw him on the golf course smoking a cigar with a friend, you wouldn’t see him next Sunday at church. Why is that? Well probably no one would ever say that smoking a cigar on the golf course would be a worse sin than a life consumed with pride or a glutton. Although for many in the church world smoking has become a bench marker for many. It is one of the churches ways to tell if you are a wolf or a sheep.
We all know that smoking is not the unpardonable sin, but it breaks many churchgoers unspoken bench marker. Something like this could upset a church’s sense of identity. It doesn’t matter really if you are Baptist, Catholic, Pentecostal, or Greek Orthodox I bet you can come up with your own set of bench markers. This type of spirituality puts most of the focus on your position. Are you in or are you out?
However, Jesus is more concerned with people’s hearts. He wants to know that they moving forward in their spiritual life, do they have the love of God and their fellow man in their life. That is way many people were shocked in his day when He said that many of the religious leaders were outside of God’s kingdom, because they were more concerned with the bench markers than peoples heart. John Ortberg in his book, The Life You’ve Always Wanted,” said it well. He said “The ‘righteous’ were more damaged by their righteousness than the sinners were by their sin.”
Here is a Sobering quote that I ran across the other day. “Only one thing haunts me more than the sins of my past: What sins am I blind to today?” Philip Yancey A quote like this will make you stop and think for a minute. Any comments on this?
“1 Then the word of the Lord came to Jonah a second time: 2 Go to the great city of Nineveh and proclaim to it the message I give you.” This passage of scripture shows God’s amazing love He has to His wayward people. It seemed at first that Jonah did everything he could to resist God’s calling the first time around, after Jonah repented God called him again. God chose to do this out of his grace and mercy.
It is very interesting that God in verse 2 tells Jonah to preach the message that I tell you. Suggesting that Jonah does not know what he will be delivering to the people of Nineveh. God simply tells Jonah to go and wait for instructions. It’s funny for I see God working like that a lot in my own life and my flesh often times finds it very irritating that He does.
The story of Jonah demonstrates why God so often leads us one step at a time. Because when God told Jonah the first time in chapter 1:1 what to say, Jonah discarded the call. So often times God only will tell us what He thinks we can handle at that time. Then in verse 3 Jonah realizes that resisting God is useless and can get you into a lot of trouble. Thus Jonah goes to Nineveh, obeying God’s call.
Then in verses 5-9 we do not see the actual word repentance being used, but we can see through the passage that is what they did in their fasting and wearing sackcloth. Repentance starts with believing God. And repentance is turning away from your evil ways, which is what the people were doing. These people were so serious about their repentance that they even made their animals fast.
Then finally in verse 10 we see that God honored their repentance, even though their sin was reason enough for harsh judgment. The people in their repentance appealed to God’s mercy and grace and not his judgment. I am so thankful that God acts more on his mercy and grace than He does on his judgment. For where would any of us be if it where not for is mercy and grace.
Within the past two weeks this question has come up twice, “what if today was your last day”? Just this past Sunday on the way home from church I heard on the radio Nickelback’s song entitled “What if today was your last day”. Then the week before that I heard a podcast sermon entitled, “what if today was your last day, what would you do?”
So these two events got me thinking how would I live differently if I knew today was my last day here on earth? Here are some things I make sure I’d get done.
- Tell my parents that I love them
- Jump on the trampoline with my kids, until we couldn’t jump anymore
- Take a walk with my wife and tell her how much she really means to me
- View the sunrise & sunset as if it was the first time I’d ever seen them
- Savor every bite of my last meal
- Call up each of my closest friends & tell them I appreciated their friendship
- MAKE EVERY SECOND COUNT
Then I got to thinking about it, no one knows the time of his or her own death, and God hasn’t revealed that to us. So why wouldn’t we live each day to the fullest. Making every moment that went by count for something. Why is it that we allow so much of the business of life distract us from what’s really important. I truly believe none of us will look back on life as we get older and say, look at all the wealth I gained, look at how busy I was. No, I believe we will look back on our lives and say, I should of spent more time with my family and friends, I should have slowed down a little and enjoyed life a little better.
Lets face it, the life most of us live is too busy, most of us want to slow down. But we live in fear that if we do slow down that business of life will catch up with us and over whelm us.
A buddy of mine today at the gym said, he finds himself going home after work logging on the computer to answer just a few more emails. My question is it really worth it taking your time away from your family. He has a toddler that he is missing out on all the new things he is doing, just to feel like he is ahead of the game a little.
For me I am trying, not saying that I am good at it cause Lord knows I always feel the need to stay busy. But I am trying to slow down and take each day as a gift. Just think how much better everything would be if we treated it like it was the last time we could ever do it. I bet that meal would taste better, making love to your spouse would be better, playing with your kids would be more enjoyable, and fact is life would be better period.
So I am challenging myself to slow down and take the path less traveled. To look at life differently, to live as if today was my last day. And just in the short time that I started this, I feel better, I don’t take so many things for granted. Life, for the first time, feels like this is how God meant for me to live my life, because who knows this really could be my last day!
