Do You Need to Rest?

December 17, 2014 by journeyintolight

I didn’t grow up thinking that rest was all that important. In fact, the less I rested, the better. I could get more done.

Then, one day I burned out when I turned forty. I became exhausted physically and emotionally. One thing that had caused the burnout was that I had ignored my need to rest.

So, I began a three- year journey to learn how to rest, along with learning several other things. I learned the value of having a hobby that I enjoyed and relaxed me, which for me was deep-sea fishing.

I also learned that many of us struggle with resting. And there are good reasons why we struggle.

So what’s up? Why do so many of us struggle with taking time out to rest?

Why It’s So Hard to Rest

One big reason that many of us struggle with resting is that we are trying to be God. We are busy trying to become important, safe, approved of, and loved. It is hard for us to trust that God is taking care of us when we rest.

So, we stay on duty 24/7 persuing our needs, instead of relying on God to meet them. “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “You are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed” (Luke 10:41). That one thing is to trust in God to take care of us.

Resting also drives home the sometimes-scary truth that who we are depends on what God thinks of us and not on how well we can earn our identity. I often feel more secure in depending on my achievements to feel important instead of God’s gift of importance (Isaiah 43:4).

A third reason we often struggle with resting is that we try to figure out what God is doing instead of trusting that whatever he is doing, it is good. God warns us, “Trust in Me with all your heart and don’t rely on your understanding, acknowledge your need for Me and then I will guide you the best way” (Proverbs 3:5-6 paraphrased).   When we trust God, we can rest from trying to figure everything out.

How To Rest

So, how do we rest?

One thing we can do is to rest one day a week. It’s one of the commandments (Exodus 20:8-11).

I started doing this after my crash. I ceased striving for achievements on that day and did things that rejuvenated me, like resting. I chose Sundays to rest after going to church.

Another thing we can do to rest is to pray. We can’t rest when we are anxious about a number of things. “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6-7).

Probably the most important thing we can do is to rest in who we are to God. We are his children and he greatly loves, respects, and protects us (our identity). We have nothing to prove to others or our self.

Let’s ask God to increase our faith to accept the rest he promises (Hebrews 4:9-11). Not only can we rest from trying to earn our salvation, but also rest from trying to earn our identity.

 

 

 

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Why Being Humble Is So Important

December 12, 2014 by journeyintolight

I don’t think I have fully appreciated how important it is to be humble. I want to be successful. I want people to respect me. I want to be comfortable.

But do I want to be humble?

I guess I’d rather be humble than proud.

But do I realize how vital it is to my welfare to be humble?

Why Would We Want to Be Humble?

Jesus and Moses were humble while on earth-and they had a lot to be proud about. But why should we be humble too. God gives us several reasons why. These include the following:

“ I command you to be humble” (Ephesians 4:2, paraphrased).

“You need to be humble in order to receive My strength” (2 Corinthians 12:9, paraphrased).

“You need to be humble before I will honor you” (Proverbs 18:12. paraphrased).

“You need to be humble for Me to use you as I have planned” (1 Corinthians 1:28-29, paraphrased).

The dictionary defines humility as the absence of pride and arrogance. We know pride is not good, but will humility make us think that we are a doormat for the world?

No!

Look at Jesus’ example. He knew he was God Almighty while on earth- yet “did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant” (Philippians 2:6-7).

Likewise, we are part of the Royal Family, and have nothing to prove. This frees us up to be treated like a servant while knowing who we really are – sons and daughters of God Almighty. Only being humble will enable us to live in this reality.

How To Be Humble

So, how can we become a humbler person?

A friend of mine expressed his determination this week to be humble, despite enjoying much ministry success. In one year of attending his church, he is now preaching the Sunday sermons in the pastor’s absence and is the leader of the men’s ministry in a medium-sized church. One thing he is trying to do to remain humble is not thinking about how much success he is having.

I suggested that he also remember that God has given him that ministry. He is enabling my friend to do it. Thanking God regularly for his work will help him realize that “apart from Me, you can do nothing” (John 15:5). My friend remembering this will help him to remain humble.

We all need to remember that, “What do we have that we did not receive from God, but if we did receive it from God, why do we boast as if we had not received it from God” (1 Corinthians 4:7, paraphrased).

Another way we can stay humble is to realize that we can never be loved, respected, and accepted enough to be satisfied unless God meets these needs as a gift, not something we earn by doing something. That humbling! The pride in me wants to earn things like importance.

A final thought regarding how to be humble is to apply the Bible to our life. God says, “If all you do is to pile up Bible knowledge in your head, you will become proud” (1 Corinthians 8:1, paraphrased). And we don’t want that to happen!

May you join with me in becoming a humbler person. Let’s practice some of the suggestions above as we cooperate with God in the miracle of becoming humble.

 

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The Problem with Idols

December 5, 2014 by journeyintolight

I never thought of myself as an idol worshipper. “I don’t fall down in front of a golden calf. I don’t have some statue sitting on my shelf that I pray to.”

But when I went to seminary nine years ago, I found out that I was trusting in a number of idols. One of those idols was what people thought of me. To a great extent my self- esteem depended on being well thought of by others. If they did not respect me, I had a hard time respecting myself.

Another idol I discovered was achievement. I needed to attain certain honors and successes to regard myself as important. If I didn’t, I felt the pain of  being unimportant.

But God doesn’t want us to live this way!

How Do We Live?

He wants us to know that we are always important, loved, and accepted by him, all of the time. He does not want us chasing after the idols of what others think of us, achievements, and power to earn what he has already given to us.

When we rely too much on our reputation, comfort, health, pleasure or good circumstances, we can make idols of them. We can desire them more than God’s will for our life. God says to us, “Seek first [My] kingdom and [My] righteousness, and all these things will be given to you” (Matthew 6:33).

When we pursue achievement or power, we can be relying more on them than God’s gift of worth to us. A few years ago I had to make a difficult decision that cost me considerable achievement and power in order to follow God’s will. Now, I regularly thank the Lord for sparing me a great deal of grief by following him. If I had stayed in the situation, I would have been miserable.

Our basic problem is that God has made us to depend on him, and we don’t want to. So, we fill this vacuum with idols that don’t satisfy.

God asks us, “Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest of fare” (Isaiah 55:2).

How Do We Get Rid of Idols?

How do we shed our idols and embrace the true and living God?

One of the first steps we can take is to become aware that we have idols. Many of our idols are hidden from us. For example, I didn’t know that an influential man in my life was a father figure to me and I was projecting father issues on him.

I didn’t realize that I had made this man an idol by depending on him to get my need for worth met. When I realized what I was doing, I was able to transfer my dependence off the man onto God to feel important.

Because our false dependencies are often hidden from us, we need to rely on the Holy Spirit to reveal them. He is in the business of revealing our idols (Psalm 139:23-24).

We also need to know who we are in God’s eyes and “love the approval of God rather than the approval of man” (John 12:43, paraphrased).

It does us no good to know that God considers us precious for just being who we are, if we live our daily lives striving to earn our worth. We show in our striving that we really don’t believe that we are worth that much. We are hooked on the idol of impressing people.

A final thought is that it is impossible to be freed from our idols on our own. We can’t escape our dependencies on achievement, pleasures, what people think and good circumstances- unless we rely on God.

God says to us, “I have freed you of your idols when Jesus died on the cross. Now, depend on Me, and I make this freedom your experience” (Romans 6:6, paraphrased).

 

 

 

 

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The Most Important Thing

December 1, 2014 by journeyintolight

What should I write about this week? Often I choose to write about some work God has done or is doing in me an exciting way- in hopes it will help you in your journey with God. In many ways, we are all cut from the same cloth.

However, this time I chose a topic that I consider to be the most important truth of the Christian life, not necessarily a truth I live deeply.

That truth is experiencing God’s love for us. It is the reason he saves us from hell, and is the reason he prospers our life. My hope is that my thoughts may help you in your relationship with God.

I have experienced God’s love in dramatic fashion a few times in my life. For example, living in my Grandma’s house as a child, I felt loved and accepted without being good or strong. I could be myself, without fear of rejection. I knew I was loved for being me, not what I did. I could relax, knowing that Grandma would never reject me.

Only in recent years have I realized that this is how God loves me.

Why Experiencing His Love For Us Is Important

Experiencing God’s love for us enables us live the Bible that we study and listen to sermons about. “The goal of the Bible is to help us to become a more loving person” (1 Timothy 1:5, paraphrased). And “How can we love unless we have first experienced God’s love for us” (1 John 4:19, paraphrased).

Our experiencing God’s love enables us to grow to become a mature Christian (Ephesians 3:18-19). To fail to experience his love makes us a noisy gong that others will consider a hypocrite (1 Corinthians 13:1).

If you are a fear-based person like myself, experiencing God’s love will drive out our fears over time. “Perfect love drives out fear” (1 John 4:18).

Another reason to experience God’s love for us is so we can trust him in the darkness. So much of life is a mystery to us and we can be clueless to what God is doing and where he is leading us. Experiencing his love for us helps us realize that whatever is happening is for our good because God loves us (1 Corinthians 13:5; Romans 8:28).

How We Experience His Love

So why is it so hard to live our daily lives experiencing God’s deep love for us?

One reason is that we were born not to experience his love – and then our families, school and society trained us that way. We often don’t want God to love us because we are sinners from birth and want to be independent from needing God. We were also trained by the world that there is “no free lunch” and its pure fantasy that God will give us his love without earning it.

These are examples of our heart beliefs that hinder receiving the experience of God’s love for us. Through the Holy Spirit’s help, we need to be freed from these lies, and embrace the truth that God loves us because of who he is, not what we do (Romans 5:8).

I have talked to people who have never experienced this kind of love. If this is our case, the generous use of our imagination to picture what this love would look like in everyday life can help us to experience his love.

We can also experience God’s love for us through a small group fellowship. God often uses his people to love on us and give us a taste of his deep love.

Finally, we need to respond to his inner guidance about when we are not living in the light of his love. Sin can keep us from experiencing his love for us. Acknowledging our sin to God restores the fellowship and connection to God and the reality of his love for us (1 John 1:9).

So, may we seek the most important thing, experiencing God’s love for us!

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Are Feelings Important?

November 21, 2014 by journeyintolight

Feelings have often been a mystery to me. What to do with them? How to manage them?

They can brighten my day or make me miserable, and everything in between.

I seemed to have learned at a young age to run away from feelings that didn’t feel good. But the feelings were often still deep inside, along with the thoughts that triggered them.

I later learned in engineering to ignore them because they often got in the way of objective decision-making.

However, I think most of us would agree that our feelings are important, but what are we supposed to do when they don’t feel good?

Why Feelings Are Important

I was taught as a young Christian that feelings were not that important. What was important was what God said in the Bible. It was dangerous to let our feelings guide us through life.

But in recent years I have learned that feelings are very important–for they can tell us the truth about our self, not necessarily the truth about life. For example, if we are afraid of what people think of us, that fear may be lying to us. The fear may be saying to us that what people think of us is who we are.

But the truth is we are what God thinks of us, which is, “We are precious, honored and loved” (Isaiah 43:4, paraphrased). Our feelings are lying to us if we fear rejection; for what God thinks of us is what counts and he will never reject us (Hebrews 13:5).

Yet, our fear of what people think of us tells us a lot about our self. The fear shows that in our heart, we still cling to the lie that we are what people think we are. This awareness is a call from God to be transformed in rejecting the lie and embracing the truth that we will never be rejected. Sure people can reject us, but it means nothing to God, for he never will.

Feelings are also important to us because they can add so much pleasure or cause so much grief in our life. Wouldn’t you like your feelings today to be peaceful, joyous, loving, compassionate, and empathetic? It sure beats feeling hatred, rage, lusts, and dissatisfaction all day. These feelings can help us determine if we are living in God’s power.

Another reason feelings are important is that often God talks to us through our feelings.

He says about our feelings,

“Come to Me in prayer when you are feeling under the pile” (Matthew 11:28, paraphrased).

“Check what you are thinking about if you are full of fears” (Philippians 4:8-10, paraphrased).

“I always give you peace when you go My way” (Proverbs 3:17, paraphrased)

What We Should Do With Them

So, what are we to do about our feelings?

Certainly, we should not stuff them by getting busy, escaping through drugs or alcohol, or trying to ignore them some other way.

Psychologists tell us that not paying attention to painful feelings can cause us a lot of problems. For example, ignoring our anger could cause a root of bitterness to spring up causing us to hurt a lot of people (Ephesians 4:26-27; Hebrews 12:15).

We can also use our feelings for guidance as long as they don’t lead us to violate biblical principles and other forms of God’s guidance. My experience has been that if I genuinely want God’s will, my desires will line up with his direction (Psalm 37:4).

We need to always remember that our feelings flow from a heart that is tricky and impossible to understand (Jeremiah 17:9). Often, we are not experiencing the real feelings when we are feeling anxiety, anger, and confusion. These feelings are intended to “protect us” from our deeper feelings of hurt, grief, fear, and sadness.

So, we need to depend on the Holy Spirit to help us know what our true feelings are so that we can face the false beliefs and dependencies of our heart, and be transformed by God.

We can ask him, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23-24).

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Why Knowing the Bible is Not Enough

November 15, 2014 by journeyintolight

One of the beliefs in many of our churches today seems to be that all we need to do is know the Bible and we will become spiritually mature.

But God says, “spiritual maturity comes by relying on the Bible to live life” (Hebrews 5:14, paraphrased).

We seem to move heaven and earth to understand the Bible from every angle possible, but seem to think it relatively unimportant to actually live the Bible that we now understand.

Or, we seem to think that maturity just happens when we understand the Bible.

Whatever the reason, we often lack the teaching and support to live the Bible from the heart.

But God warns us not to deceive ourselves by becoming knowers of the Bible only, and not doers as well (James 1:22-23).

I was reading the Bible yesterday in the book of Jeremiah about how God warned Israel time after time that if they did not change their ways that he would punish them. They knew God’s word. But they did not listen to God’s word and change their ways- and God had to punish them.

Living the Bible is what God wants from us, not just knowing it.

Certainly, becoming godly begins by knowing the Bible. But we don’t just park there. We move ahead and learn to rely on the Bible. And that means changing. This is where life can become messy because often we don’t want to change.

I think this is why it is so easy for us to fall for the deception of acquiring more and more knowledge and think we’ll doing great. We don’t take the time “to consider the direction our life, and change our ways to God’s ways” (Psalm 119:59, paraphrased). We can become so distracted by acquiring knowledge that we avoid the awareness of our need to change.

Knowing the Bible was intended to be a living experience where we allow God to work in our hearts. It is to be experiential knowledge, not just head knowledge. “For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, ……. and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Hebrews 4:12).

Knowing the Bible was not intended to be only an intellectual experience. Yet, many of us approach reading and studying the Bible as a philosophy or history experience. We substitute Bible knowledge for an intimate relationship with God.

In Psalm 119 God says, “I want you to hope, obey, receive comfort, meditate, and delight in the Bible.” He wants us to respond to what we know in the Bible.

So, knowing the Bible is not enough. We need to also respond to it. May we have the courage to allow God to transform us and lead us according to his Bible.

 

 

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Is The Glass Half Empty?

November 7, 2014 by journeyintolight

I have tended to be pessimistic most of my life. I have often followed Murphy’s Law that if something could go wrong, it probably will. I have frequently concluded that the glass was half empty, rather than half full.

Yet, I know this is wrong.

An example of this happened in the past this week. I received a number of test results regarding my physical condition. It was mostly good news! Yet a couple of results weren’t to my liking. Since then, I have felt upset over those results, even though I seem to be in pretty good shape overall.

I concluded that the glass was half empty.

But was the glass half empty?

Why We Think the Glass is Half Empty

The world we live in teaches us to see life as the glass is half empty. Listen to the nightly news or read a newspaper and compare positive to negative news. It’s overwhelmingly negative.

In addition, many of us were trained in homes that saw life as the glass is half empty. As a result, many of us have been thinking that the glass is half empty for a long time. Today, I tend to focus on what is wrong with my situation, and discount the good about it.

Also, from my earliest years, I have had low expectations for good things to happen in the future. I tend to expect something close to the worst possible outcome, until it happens for the better. It is a habit of thinking that is hard to go away.

How We Can See the Glass as Half Full

First, we need to change our thinking habits. We need to think more like God, who wants us to see that the glass as half full. ”And we know that God causes all things to work together for good (Romans 8:28).

He wants us to choose to think about “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, and whatever is admirable” (Philippians 4:8, NIV) about our situation. We tend to think about whatever may not be true, whatever is wrong, and whatever is ugly.

Another way to change our thinking habits and see life more positively is to pray and mediate on the Scriptures, These are God’s thoughts and they help us to gain God’s positive viewpoint on our problems. Such as, “Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance” (James 1:2-3). Instead, we tend to curse the darkness and get upset when we are hit with problems.

A third way we can grow in seeing that the glass as half full is to re-train ourselves. For example, when my book sales are low and few are reading my blog, I am training myself to thank God for the meager results that do not reduce my worth, his love for me, and my acceptance. I am learning to receive God’s gift of being important to him for just being me, and not because I am a superstar who succeeds in everything that I do.

So, let’s develop the habit of seeing the positive in our circumstances and our future. Let’s learn to see our glass as being half full!

 

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Give Thanks for Everything?

November 1, 2014 by journeyintolight

One of the most difficult commands to obey is to give thanks to God for everything (Ephesians 5:20). I sort of obey it, but not completely.

Why should I thank God for being hospitalized five times this year? Why should I thank him for two surgeries, one in which I almost died? Why should I thank God for the hard time that a church I care about is going through?

I don’t have any problem thanking God for the many good things in my life- like three grandchildren, areas of growth in my life, and pretty good health now.

But to thank him for things that hurt, scare, and depress?

Now that Thanksgiving is approaching, I would like to grow in giving thanks for the “bad” things, or throw the command out and accept the fact that God didn’t mean what I thought he meant.

So, should we give thanks for everything?

God says to us, “Give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you” (1 Thessalonians 5:18). He also says, “I work all your circumstances for your good” (Romans 8:28), paraphrased).

What he is telling us is that he controls what is happening to us and makes sure that they bend to accomplish his purposes and our good.

But we may say, “How can this cancer be good?” Or, “How can this big failure be good?”

He responds, “No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces [godliness] for those who have been trained by it” (Hebrews 12:11).

How many children really think that being disciplined is good? My kids never believed me when I told them that the spanking I was going to give them would hurt me more than them (I think they knew I was kidding).

But with God it’s true. He says, “Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline will drive it far from him” (Proverbs 22:15). He hurts us that he may do good to us. He desires that we become wise, not foolish – so, he disciplines us.

God considers our circumstances to be good if they lead to our godliness, even if they are painful, scary and depressing. He is bending all our circumstances towards helping us to depend on him instead of pleasant circumstances (which don’t always happen).

Not to say that he won’t give us good circumstances, for he promises us many good circumstances because he loves us so much (Psalm 23:6). Nevertheless, he is relentless in developing an intimate love relationship with us and if hard times will help this to happen, he will cause or allow them.

Therefore, it makes sense to give thanks for everything.

So, I challenge you to join me this Thanksgiving season to give thanks for everything. God will use our pesky problems, weaknesses, and failures to transform us into more godly people.

I know it seems insane to give thanks for things that hurt. But he wants us to believe that he is in control and has our best interest at heart in everything that happens to us.

Though we may not understand what the good is in our circumstances, let us trust this Thanksgiving season that God will cause good to come from them. A good that otherwise would never have happened (Proverbs 3:5-6).

Let’s give thanks for everything!

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Getting to Know Our Self

October 24, 2014 by journeyintolight

A few days ago, I was motivated to call a Christian leader to encourage him in a difficult ministry that he had. As I thought through what I was going to say, I realized that in addition to trying to encourage him, I wanted him to welcome my counsel, something I didn’t think God wanted me to give. So, I eventually decided, I would write a letter telling him of my prayer support, which would give me less of an opportunity to use him to meet my needs.

This is an example of how subtle and deceptive we really are deep inside. We may do good things for bad reasons. As I began to probe my heart in seminary to find out why I did what I did, I was often shocked at what God revealed. Little did I realize how I had used people to determine what I thought of myself. Also, how I sought the approval of others to feel loved, bypassing the true way to a good self-image and being loved by accepting what God thought of me.

Why Get to Know Our Self Better

So, why get to know our self better? Isn’t that self-centered and egotistical? Wouldn’t it be a better use of our time to get to know God better through increasing our Bible knowledge?

The answer is “No.”

Certainly, knowing more Bible enables us to know more about God and can lead to knowing God better. But so can knowing our self lead to experiencing God in deeper ways.

If we don’t know our self very well, we can do right things for wrong reasons and cling to idols that hinder our growth in experiencing God’s grace and power.

We are great deceivers and the one we fool the most is our self.

Isaiah described the human heart as feeding “on ashes, a deluded heart misleads him; he cannot save himself or say, ‘Is not this thing in my right hand a lie?’” (Isaiah 44:20). The human heart in Isaiah’s day couldn’t discern how foolish and futile worshipping a block of wood was to success in life!

We often focus on outward behavior in trying to live like Jesus. We often ignore what is going on deep inside of us. And yet, our motives are what God focuses on.

‘“Are you so dull?’ Jesus asked his disciples. ‘Don’t you see that whatever enters the mouth goes into the stomach and then out of the body (No harm, no foul). But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and these make a man sinful. For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, sexual immorality, theft, false testimony, slander. These are what make a man sinful; but eating with unwashed hands does not make him sinful” (Matthew 15:16-18, paraphrased).

Getting to know what is going on deep inside of us and what motivates us is critical to cooperating with God in being freed from our bondage to sin.

And one of the biggest sin bondages is our reliance on the collection of idols we use instead of relying on God’s promises for worth, love, and acceptance. Did you know that your reliance on that position of respect to feel important could be an idol?

How to Get to Know Our Self Better

So, how do we get to know our self better?

One thing we do is to look to God to reveal to us who we are and what we rely on. We too easily fool our self and can’t be depended upon to know our self. “The heart is deceitful above all else and is beyond cure, who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9).

But God can.

“Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23-24). I pray this often to know myself and to be transformed into the person God had in mind when he willed me to exist.

But you may say. “But God may reject me if he knew how sinful I am deep within. I don’t know if I should air my dirty laundry to him.”

But God says, ‘”I already know what is going on deep within you “and never will I leave you; never will I forsake you (Hebrews 13:5), I will love you no matter what you are deep within (Jeremiah 31:3, paraphrased), and you will always be precious to Me, no matter what’” (Isaiah 43:4, paraphrased).

So let’s get to know our self better so that we can cooperate with God in becoming free of our bondages and increasingly live the wonderful life that God has planned for us!

 

 

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Is That All There Is?

October 18, 2014 by journeyintolight

Many years ago, singer Peggy Lee asked the question, “Is that all there is?” in a song. From my memory, these are some lines from that song:

 

Is that all there is? Is that all there is?

If that’s all there is, my friend, then let’s keep dancing.

Let’s break out the booze and have a ball.

If that’s all, …there is.

 

It is a sad and hopeless song that saw the meaninglessness of life.

But, is that all there is?

No! Life was intended to be an exciting adventure following God. I discovered this at the age of 26 after I had failed to find sufficient meaning in a career, education, romance, and pleasure seeking.

Several years ago, I wondered if the discipleship I offered men could be deeper. I wondered if I could learn to help them be transformed in deeper ways. I wondered, “Is this all there is?”

No! I went to seminary to study how to disciple men better and found that there were many concepts and practices I did not know or do that could help men to be transformed at the deepest levels.

Then, yesterday I talked to a depressed man who was struggling to find usefulness in his retirement years. He was comfortable and had no external forces on him to do much of anything. He wondered, “Is this all there is?”

I said to him, “No! God has prepared many things for you to be and do in your retirement years.” “For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus, for good works, which God has prepared in advance that we should do” (Ephesians 2:10).

 

Why We Think That’s All There is

 

Many of us think that this is all there is because we have been deceived into believing the lies of the evil world under Satan’s control. “The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy” (John 10:10).

Satan tries to sell us a false narrative that life is largely meaningless, that Christianity is following the rules, and that we are over-the-hill when we retire. All of this narrative is false!

What the narrative misses is the loving, intimate relationship that God offers us to face and overcome the challenges of meaninglessness, ministry, and usefulness.

Yet, we tend to cling to the pain we know, afraid to venture out into the unknown fully controlled by Someone who loves us dearly and can move heaven and earth to help us. We prefer to believe, “Yes, that’s all there is.”

 

How To Pursue More

 

To pursue all there is, we must have the courage and be willing to take risks. Listen to this inspiring excerpt from a speech by President Teddy Roosevelt:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

May we never accept the lies of the world, but embrace the truth that Jesus promises us, “I have come that you may have a truly meaningful and fulfilling life” (John 10:10, paraphrased).

May we never believe, “That’s all there is.”

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