Things to Think About This 2008

We're not quite a month into the 2008 year, so before we get any further, I thought I'd share with you this article I found on the Lifeway website. The article is titled "Questions for a New Year" by Don Whitney.

The questions that Whitney asks can be a challenge and require that we all take the time to go into deep thought and prayer about how God wants us to focus on our life this year.

Here are the first 1o questions taken from the article:

1. What's one thing you could do this year to increase your enjoyment of God?
2. What's the most humanly impossible thing you will ask God to do this year?
3. What's the single most important thing you could do to improve the quality of your family life this year?
4. In which spiritual discipline do you most want to make progress this year, and what will you do about it?
5. What is the single biggest time-waster in your life, and what will you do about it this year?
6. What is the most helpful new way you could strengthen your church?
7. For whose salvation will you pray most fervently this year?
8. What's the most important way you will, by God's grace, try to make this year different from last year?
9. What one thing could you do to improve your prayer life this year?
10. What single thing that you plan to do this year will matter most in 10 years? In eternity?

There are 31 questions in all, so I suggest that you visit the article online. I just didn't want to overwhelm anyone with 31 questions right from the start. Only those with the courage to live as part of God's army need continue. Click here for the article.

One might argue that we should just live for today, and I definitely agree in living for today since today may be our last. But I think it's important to live for today with a focus for the direction that the rest of our lives will take us - no matter how far away that may be in the future. As Whitney points out in his article, God doesn't want us to be aimlessly living from day to day without regard to where we are going. We need to look to God for guidance each and every day of our lives. And we ought to evaluate and re-evaluate where we are and where God is directing us to be.

Timely Reminders

A few weeks have flown by since my last posting at the start of 2008. As time will continue to fly by, I think it’s important to remember how short life really is. There are a few Scripture verses I like because they help put life into perspective with regards to time.

James 4:14 (NIV):

“Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”

Psalm 39:5 (NIV):

“You have made my days a mere handbreadth;
the span of my years is as nothing before you.
Each man's life is but a breath.”
Selah

Pslam 103:15-16 (NIV):

15 As for man, his days are like grass,
he flourishes like a flower of the field;

16 the wind blows over it and it is gone,
and its place remembers it no more.

Our physical lives are temporal regardless of how many years we may live. (I know I still have times when I’m waiting for something and time seems to go by really slowly. Sometimes a time period like a year seems like such a long time, but in reality, we can never recapture a moment and we can never slow down time when it seems to slip through our fingers.) However, we are also reminded that while our physical lives are temporal, our spiritual lives are eternal. The Bible promises us that we can find eternal life in Jesus Christ.

“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 3:23, NASB).

And this brings us to the foundation of my blog...

23 ”Then he said to them all: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.” (Luke 9:23-24, NIV)

Happy New Year...2008!

As we enter this new year, I pray that it's going to be filled with God's blessings each and every day. I find joy in knowing that God's mercies are created new for us each morning (as we're reminded of in Lamentations 3:22-24) and I hope you do too.

At the start of every year, I hear people make new resolutions. The coming of a new year brings hope for many that they can start fresh with new beginnings. This can be looked at as a testament to the desire for change - to make things right, to make things better. I'm sure most - if not all - people don't start off their year thinking about how they're going to make things worse for themselves. Rather, there seems to be this courage and hope that a new year means renewed focus and strength for a better life. And we know that true life comes through Jesus Christ alone and in picking up our cross daily to follow after Him.

So, with this new year, I just wanted to remind everyone of God's promise to us that we can start off each day fresh and new. After all, we only have today to live. There's nothing we can do to change what has happened in the past and we cannot know everything that will happen in the future.

Be encouraged today and everyday that God is God and we're not. Be encouraged that when God is all we have left, He is all we will ever need. May today be another new day that we rise up to the cause of Christ and pick up our cross and follow Him.

Happy New Year!