God doesn’t desire more of our time sometimes; he desires more of our attention all the time.

Ever feel frustrated because you hear messages about getting closer to God and you definitely desire this for yourself, but you are inundated with so much to do already that this only makes you feel guilty because you are too busy for God? I think we all feel this at one time or another.

Some of you may need to carve some time out of your busy schedule for more specific time to be with God, but that isn’t necessarily the only answer to this question. Look at the following Scriptures:

“I have set the Lord always before me.” Psalm 16:8 NIV
“My eyes are ever on the Lord.” Psalm 25:15 NIV
“I will extol the Lord at all times; his praise will always be on my lips.” Psalm 34:1 NIV

Reading these words makes you wonder if these are the words of a monk who had nothing else to do but devote himself to God. Actually, they are the words of David, king of Israel, a great ruler and warrior. How did he manage to run a nation and keep his eyes on the Lord at all times? The only conclusion is that he did this while he did everything else. It’s a continual awareness of God that we are talking about here, not necessarily more time devoted to spiritual pursuits.

I once saw a sign that read: “Your god is what you pay attention to.” You see, I believe you can pay attention to God while you are doing everything else. It’s all about doing everything for God and seeing God in everything we do. It’s about bringing God into the boardroom, the exercise room, the living room, and the bedroom. Now of course he’s already in all these places but we’re talking about being aware of his being there at all times. That’s what it means to set the Lord always before us.

Worship is a frame of mind that always has God in the picture. We don’t need church, or Bible study, or devotions to remind us about the Lord if we’re already aware of him all the time. These opportunities then become more precious to us because we can devote all our attention to that which we have been aware of all along.

Mister Rogers was right after all: There is only one you. But this information is much more important than to just be boosting your self-esteem. It is to help you better serve others by being more confident about your God-given role in life.

No one else fits your shape. No one else has your blend of gifts, talents, and natural abilities – making you very important in the whole scheme of things. “God made our bodies with many parts,” wrote Paul, “and he has put each part just where he wants it.” (1 Corinthians 12:18) And as it is with the human body, so it is with the Body of Christ – the corporate collection of all who believe.

But this uniqueness goes beyond giftedness; it reaches as well into the depth of each of our experiences in life. No one else has your life. No one else has your pain, your hardship, your joys and sorrows. Everything in life shapes us and we are shaped by everything for a reason – so that we can touch others in a unique way based upon who we are and what we’ve been through. God doesn’t waste anything in our lives.

Every piece of our lives and experiences can be used of Christ to touch someone else. We were made for each other; we live for each other; we even die for each other. We die with hope so that others who live might see the reality of Christ in even the darkest of hours. God uses everything.

Are you just getting by, or are you living for a reason? Think about your unique gifts and ask yourself how those gifts are benefiting others. What specific way is God using you to touch others in the Body of Christ? Do you seem to have an extra measure of wisdom, or mercy, or discernment, or knowledge, or administration, or desire to serve? These will help determine how you can look for opportunities to help others.

And then think about the things you have gone through so far in your life – especially the difficult or challenging things where God has met you with his presence and power. That information is not just for you, it’s for you to empathize with and encourage others who have encountered similar struggles.

God isn’t messing around here. There are no accidents with our lives. Whatever we have received and experienced has shaped who we are, and because of that, we are qualified servants. There is truly no one else like you … for a reason.

By John Fischer
If you are anything like me, you have probably caught yourself trying to make your own sin out to be something less than the big sins that everyone else commits. You know, the biggies that are in the Ten Commandments like murder, adultery, stealing, lying … stuff like that. Certainly I’m not that kind of sinner. No, I’m a minor sinner. When I sin, it’s more like “sin lite.”

Thinking like this creates a ridiculous state of affairs when it comes to Christ dying for all our sins while we attempt to rationalize them. Sure I’m a sinner and all that, but my sins are mostly the private ones that don’t hurt anyone else. Oh sure, they may not hurt anyone else but they killed Jesus! Let’s think about that the next time we’re considering one of those little private sins. Did Jesus die less for my little sins than for anyone else’s? Did my sins only make Jesus die a little bit? If sin means missing the mark (which it does), by how much I miss it is a non-issue. No one’s out there measuring how far we missed it by. We missed it. Line up for the death penalty. (Thank God, this is where Jesus comes in.)

When you’re dead, you’re dead. I’m not a medical professional, but I’m pretty sure there’s no such thing as being just a little dead. Yet try telling your rationalizations that. Look at the silly consequences we create whenever we try to rationalize the truth.

There is no such thing as a little sin. Sin is sin, and the wages of sin is death, says the Bible, “but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 6:23) You can’t any more sin a little than you can get a little eternal life. There is only one way this works: Sin, death, gift of God, and eternal life, in that order, and they’re all big time – full strength. Whenever we sin, we sin big, and we die big; but Jesus died big time, so that God could give the gift of eternal life … and that’s big too! That’s forever! To belittle any one of these is to belittle the rest.

So if you ever catch yourself comparing your sin to others and trying to tell yourself that your sin is less significant, just remember Christ died for our sins, and there’s never anything little about that!

No one can be just a little bit dead.

By John Fischer
If you are anything like me, you have probably caught yourself trying to make your own sin out to be something less than the big sins that everyone else commits. You know, the biggies that are in the Ten Commandments like murder, adultery, stealing, lying … stuff like that. Certainly I’m not that kind of sinner. No, I’m a minor sinner. When I sin, it’s more like “sin lite.”

Thinking like this creates a ridiculous state of affairs when it comes to Christ dying for all our sins while we attempt to rationalize them. Sure I’m a sinner and all that, but my sins are mostly the private ones that don’t hurt anyone else. Oh sure, they may not hurt anyone else but they killed Jesus! Let’s think about that the next time we’re considering one of those little private sins. Did Jesus die less for my little sins than for anyone else’s? Did my sins only make Jesus die a little bit? If sin means missing the mark (which it does), by how much I miss it is a non-issue. No one’s out there measuring how far we missed it by. We missed it. Line up for the death penalty. (Thank God, this is where Jesus comes in.)

When you’re dead, you’re dead. I’m not a medical professional, but I’m pretty sure there’s no such thing as being just a little dead. Yet try telling your rationalizations that. Look at the silly consequences we create whenever we try to rationalize the truth.

There is no such thing as a little sin. Sin is sin, and the wages of sin is death, says the Bible, “but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 6:23) You can’t any more sin a little than you can get a little eternal life. There is only one way this works: Sin, death, gift of God, and eternal life, in that order, and they’re all big time – full strength. Whenever we sin, we sin big, and we die big; but Jesus died big time, so that God could give the gift of eternal life … and that’s big too! That’s forever! To belittle any one of these is to belittle the rest.

So if you ever catch yourself comparing your sin to others and trying to tell yourself that your sin is less significant, just remember Christ died for our sins, and there’s never anything little about that!

No one can be just a little bit dead.

By John Fischer
“Every time you forget that character is one of God’s purposes for your life, you will become frustrated by your circumstances.” — Rick Warren

Somewhere along the line, we got the idea that we deserve to have a relatively easy life. We have a very false sense of what should be the norm. If someone asks you how things are going and you answer: “Fine,” that is thought of as normal – the way it should be. If there is anything wrong, and you answer that question with a qualifier (“Fine, but …”), then it is assumed that your life is not normal. If something is wrong, then your life is for some reason not what it is supposed to be.

In actuality, the real thing wrong is this kind of thinking. Until we change our thinking in this regard, life will always be frustrating. We will be preoccupied with trying to fix everything instead of learning life’s lessons. We will always be expecting things to get better around the next bend in the road when “better” isn’t anywhere on the map. Until we learn this, we will just wrestle with life instead of working with it – taking what God sends as our course description, and readying ourselves for each new lesson. Difficulty, surprise, hardship, and trials of every kind are the norm for the follower of Christ.

Paul puts it this way: “We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed and broken. We are perplexed, but we don’t give up and quit. We are hunted down, but God never abandons us. We get knocked down, but we get up again and keep going.” (2 Corinthians 4:8-9 NLT)

Now that’s normal. If you want to grow as a Christian, expect this kind of treatment. And the reason for this is two-fold. First, life by nature is difficult and hardship produces character in us as we meet life’s challenges with the Holy Spirit; and second, when we go through ordinary hardship and difficulty the reality of the presence of God in our lives can be more easily seen, because the hope and confidence of Christ in our lives is in direct contrast to our situation, making God easier to spot. Or as Paul goes on to say: “Our lives are at constant risk for Jesus’ sake, which makes Jesus’ life all the more evident in us.” (2 Corinthians 4:11 MSG)

If normal for you means everything is fine and dandy, then brace yourself, because it’s definitely going to get worse. Count on it. God loves you too much to allow you to get away with anything less. And if life is difficult for you right now, rejoice in your opportunity to grow. We need to all start expecting another kind of normal.

One of the more damaging fallacies Christians can fall into is the thought that because they are a Christian, they are better than most people out there who are not. For example, they are a better mom, a better husband, a better child, a better teacher, a better coach, or they have a better marriage, a better family, etc. Though it may appear prideful or self-righteous, that may not necessarily be the case. This kind of thinking can spring from a genuine, though incorrect, assumption that Christianity, in order to be true, must produce better all-around people. In other words, we take on the responsibility to defend the truth through the “better” lives we display.

Now granted, we are all growing in Christ with the ultimate goal of becoming like him, but that doesn’t necessarily mean we are “better” than other people. It means we are in the process of becoming more loving, more truthful, more peaceful, more patient, and more kind. “Better” is often defined in terms that have little to do with becoming like Christ. The religious leaders of his day would never have described Jesus as being better than anybody. In fact, they thought Jesus was a scoundrel – they called him a drunkard and a glutton (Matthew 11:18,19). So “better” is a relative term.

What’s true is that we should be getting better, but “better” compared to what? Compared to ourselves – what we used to be – which may still be a long way from someone else out there who is perhaps a more healthy person overall. Bottom line: It’s not good to compare yourself with others, whether they are Christians or not. “Better” means better than I was yesterday, not better than you.

Admitting that an atheist has a better marriage, a Mormon has better kids, a Muslim family is more loving, or a Buddhist is healthier need not be a threat to one’s Christianity. The point is, as Christians, we are saved and that’s the most important thing. We are all sinners saved by grace, and rather than making ourselves out to be different from everybody else, we should be focusing more on our similarities. If we need Jesus, so does everybody else, which makes us basically the same as the rest of humanity.

I might think of myself as a good father but you know there are lots of good fathers out there, and when it comes to fathering, I have much to learn. So someone might teach me about fathering, and I might, in turn, be able to share Christ with that person because he may be experiencing a lot of guilt inside, or he may be carrying around a sense of failure, or he may feel alone and distant from God and wondering what his life is all about.

So you see, being a Christian has nothing to do with being better than anybody; it has everything to do with getting better, which is something we could all stand.

www.purposedrivenlife.com

“Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different.” — Roger von Oech

I love this quote. I found it in the sign-off of an e-mail from a friend and it has provided a good deal of reflection, some of which I offer to you today.

First is the use of the word “discovery.” You could replace that word with “worship” and the quote would still work. “Worship consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different.” I have found a good deal of worship is discovery. As we find out more about who we are and why we are here, we discover that God is more involved than we thought. When you find out the truth about God, it’s like discovering what was always there; we just missed it somehow.

C.S. Lewis coined the phrase “of course” to describe the discovery of God’s presence in the world and in our lives. Worship is the uncovering of God at work in the world. It’s all about discovery. For instance, when you find out you were made for God, it’s not like some radical thought that never crossed your mind. It’s almost as if you knew it, but you forgot. The phrase “of course” seems to capture this discovery aspect perfectly. A purpose driven life rings true because it confirms something we all knew deep inside; it’s just that no one put words to it for our generation until now.

Secondly, I like thinking something different. A follower of Christ looks at things differently. Learning to “see” is a lot of what it means to be a Christian. Christ gives us new eyes, and nothing looks the same to us anymore.

A follower of Christ looks at:
death and thinks life,
losing and thinks winning,
tragedy and thinks opportunity,
brokenness and thinks humility,
accidents and thinks purpose,
coincidence and thinks destiny,
despair and thinks hope,
poverty and thinks wealth,
wealth and thinks poverty,
failure and thinks success,
the seen and thinks about the unseen,
history and thinks God’s story,
science and thinks God’s laws,
psychology and thinks Christ’s wisdom,
anthropology and thinks God’s image,
astronomy and thinks God’s heavens,
the human body and thinks God’s dwelling place,
war and thinks man’s rebellion,
the cross and thinks everything made new,
truth and thinks Jesus.

The list is certainly not exhaustive. You can add to it I’m sure. In fact, that would be a good idea – to add to this list your own observations. You might surprise yourself at what you come up with. A lot of what we know, we don’t know until we think about it. You might just discover you think something different!

www.purposedrivenlife.com

“Christ in you, the hope of glory.” (Colossians 1:27)

You have a mission in life and this is it: you. Your mission is not only your story, though that is part of it, it is you, because Christ is in you. You were made to be a vessel to carry him and reflect him through your personality as he lives his life through yours. You are the temple, the dwelling place of the most high. You are a carrier of Christ; he lives again in you. Jesus died, rose again, and went to heaven in his new body, but he lives on through his Spirit in us. You could say he never really left; he just took up residence in us.

The Bible calls you lots of things, but they all underline this point. You are a fragrance of Christ wherever you go (2 Corinthians 2:17). You are a letter known and read by everyone (2 Corinthians 3:1-2). You are a vessel carrying around a treasure – “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.” (2 Corinthians 4:6-7) And all of us together form the Body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12). All this to say that you and I are God’s greatest statement. It’s why he made us.

Wait a minute. “Doesn’t that put a lot of pressure on me?” you ask. “How can I possibly be the equivalent of Christ walking around on earth? How can I do justice to this task?” Here’s the deal. You aren’t Christ all by yourself. We together form the Body of Christ. All of us. Each one with a gift; each one needing the others to show the full character of Jesus.

And we aren’t perfect, either; we are in process. And this is OK. Your slip-ups and failures and sins don’t negate the presence of Christ in your life. They show why you have him – why you need him. He is still perfectly capable of being all these things in us, in spite of us.

The process, in fact, is the story we tell. Your life makes up the pages on which the story of Christ’s redemption of you is told. It’s a story in process. If we were complete and perfect, we wouldn’t have much to tell and no one could relate to us. As it is, we can tell new parts of the story every day as those around us witness the story unfolding.

All of this means that you are the evidence of the reality of Christ to the world, because God has a mission, and the mission is you.

 www.purposedrivenlife.com

Eugene Debs, who ran for president of the

“As long as there is a lower class, I am in it.

As long as there is a criminal element, I’m of it.

As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”

Obviously he didn’t get elected since none of us has ever heard of him, but I believe there is a lot of truth in thinking this way about our place in the world.

The Apostle Paul had something very similar to say in a letter to a new church:

“When I am with the Jews, I become one of them so that I can bring them to Christ … When I am with the Gentiles who do not have the Jewish law, I fit in with them as much as I can … When I am with those who are oppressed, I share their oppression so that I might bring them to Christ. Yes, I try to find common ground with everyone …” (1 Corinthians 9:20-22 NLT)

Both these men are talking about relating to people by identifying with them through finding something shared in common.

Christians have traditionally been really good at not thinking this way, and in fact, creating and maintaining quite the opposite – a distance from those around us who aren’t Christians. When it comes to dealing with “common sinners” we have a tendency to be more like the Pharisees than like Jesus. A Pharisee once judged Jesus for allowing a woman of the streets to bathe his feet in perfume mixed with the tears of her sorrowful life. The Pharisee had already distanced himself from the woman because of her sin and was shocked that Jesus, as a teacher, did not do the same. He even thought to himself that Jesus wouldn’t let her touch him if he knew what kind of woman she was. Jesus, in the meantime, was busy understanding her, including her sins, which were no problem for him since he was to take them to the cross for her, and in doing so, forgive her. (Luke 7:36-50)

Why is it so hard for us to identify with sinners and so easy to judge them when we, too, are guilty? We must stop this distancing of ourselves from sinners and start looking for common ground like Paul and, yes, even like Mr. Debs.

I really do like his campaign slogan. We would all be more compassionate and more merciful if we would take it on.

“As long as there is a lower class, I am in it.

As long as there is a criminal element, I’m of it.

As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free.”

And I’m adding one more thing:

And as long as there is a sinner, I am one too, bringing good news of Christ’s forgiveness to others like me who need it.

        www.purposedrivenlife.com                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Your mission is to live your life.

In 1 Corinthians 7, the Apostle Paul addresses believers who are married to unbelievers, and outlines a general rule that if the unbelieving spouse chooses to stay in the marriage, it would be good for the believer to stay, too. He gives two reasons for this: First, the children will have a godly influence through the believing parent, and second, the unbeliever may be converted “because of you.” (1 Corinthians 7:16) (Exceptions to this rule would of course be situations of abuse and endangerment of a spouse or child.)

Just what does he mean by “because of you,” I wonder? Does it mean you are on a personal crusade to save your spouse? Does it mean that you will preach the Gospel to your spouse at every possible opportunity? Does it mean you will turn your house into a religious institution that coerces your spouse to either put up with Christianity or leave? No, it doesn’t mean any of these things.

It means simply what it says: “… because of you” – because of who you are, because of how you live, because of the way your faith affects everything you do, because of the way you carry on your life, because of the reality of Christ in your life. That’s it. No more; but certainly, no less. Paul is suggesting that living your life with a sense of purpose that comes from your faith in God is enough to convert someone.

It occurs to me that this could be applied to all believers in relation to life in the world among people with whom we work and associate who are not believers. General rule: Don’t leave the world. (Where would you go anyway?) Stay in the world – in relationships with unbelievers – for the chance that someone may be converted “because of you.”

We are not on a crusade; we are on a mission to live our lives according to God’s purposes. When we do that, we make possible an environment of change where a person who does not have a meaningful relationship with God might become curious about someone who does. “Because of you” is a statement of subtle influence, not coercion, and in the context of Paul’s advice in 1 Corinthians 7, it is a steady influence over time, as would be implied by a marriage. There’s nothing complex or even premeditated about a “because of you” influence. This is a believer going about the process of believing; and this is an unbeliever going over their life with a microscope, observing the good, the bad, and the ugly. Does not matter if God is there.

Thought for the day: Don’t ever sell short what God can do “because of you.”

 www.purposedrivenlife.com