Journey into Lightl

Choosing to be More

Do you measure your worth by what you do? Do you feel more important when others notice your achievements? Do you think, “I am what I think others think I am.”?

If you do these things, is your truth really truth?

Early in my career I was an engineer because I needed to regard myself as important by gaining the approval and respect of others. My need to fill the hole of low self-esteem was so great I ignored the reality I didn’t like engineering. I thought my worth was determined what others would respect. But I was wrong.

When I became a Christian in my mid-twenties, I had to make a choice – Do I trust in doing the job God wanted me to do and gain his praise, or do I chase the praise of others and disobey God.

For the most part I chose to follow God’s will and do his sometimes obscure and frustrating assignments. I sometimes chose to become less in the eyes of others. And that has hurt at times.

However, several times I have chosen to get out of God’s lane and pursue great things for myself. How did that work out? Two job downgrades, an early retirement, and a few jobs that were way-over-my-head. I did this to avoid thinking I wasn’t very important.

Many of us are led astray from simply knowing and doing God’s job for us. Instead, we seek the fame, fortune, and pleasures of this life that distract and sap our energies and keep us from experiencing a more rewarding life. We seek to gain more, but attain less.

We may pursue being fulfilled our way – not God’s. But God designed us and knows best how we should live this life. We seek to live in our strength and avoid God’s powerful and rewarding path. The result will be a disappointing life and a horrible eternity.

In order to choose to be less in this life, we need perspective. This life is not all there is. It is a drop in the bucket compared to the forever of the next one. $10,000,000,000 is nothing compared to the value of being in heaven forever.

We have to go beyond what we see and rely on what we don’t see; which is the high value of doing our obscure tasks here for future glory and honor as part of the royal family in heaven. The rewards of the next life is the treasure we need to set our sights on – not the temporary glitz and glamor offered by the few short years here.

We will have to swallow our pride and allow God to give us what we need most, like importance, acceptance and love. What we need to do is to cooperate with God in developing our relationship with him so that we can experience him meeting these needs in a satisfying way.

May we keep our focus on Christ and his future blessings to endure the hardships of this life as Moses did. “He chose to be mistreated with the people of God rather than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin. He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking to his reward” (Hebrews 11:25-26, NIV).

Let us choose to be less in this life, and allow God to take us on a supernatural journey that will enable us to become far more in the next.

What is a step you sense you need to take today to be more in the future, but maybe less now?