Journey Of Faith Blog

• Am I satisfied with my priorities?
• Where will I be five years from now if this continues to be my weekly schedule? 
• What is my aim? What are my goals?
• Is there a need to reprioritize my efforts or reevaluate my schedule?

2. Operate in the present. Every day, you are given 86,400 golden seconds to use. And guess what -- if you don’t use them, you will definitely lose them. Remember again, time can be wasted, but it can never be recycled. So here is a very simple piece of advice: Don’t procrastinate! This concept is biblical. “Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth” (Proverbs 27:1).

Haven’t you discovered that opportunities never seem to last? Take coupons, for instance. I remember our son, Scott, trying to cash in a pizza coupon that read, “For a limited time only.” It was so limited that it had expired, and we had to pay full price. If you don’t use it, you will lose it and often suffer loss in the process.

3. Appreciate what’s important. Follow Paul’s thinking as we read in Ephesians 5:17, “So then do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is.” There is no more important place in which to be than in the center of God’s will for your life. God’s will for your life can be summarized in three words: knowing, growing, and going.

God wants you to know Him intimately, to have a personal relationship with Him. “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the LORD, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon Me and go and pray to Me, and I will listen to you. And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you, says the LORD” (Jer. 29:11-14a, NKJV).

• God also wants you to grow, to mature and develop in your faith. That’s why He has given you the Bible and His church. “Blessed are they whose ways are blameless, who walk according to the law of the LORD. Blessed are they who keep his statutes and seek him with all their heart” (Ps. 119:1-2).
• Last, we need to go and tell others about Him and His love for us. “Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age’ ” (Matt. 28:18-20).

These are the basics, the important things, and when you don’t have the basics in focus, all the rest of life seems just a little out of balance.

4. Regulate the pressure. I do a lot of flying and whenever I get on the plane I hear the same thing, “Ladies and gentlemen, our cabin has been pressurized for your comfort.” The way I understand this, (despite the fact that my engineer friends say that I don’t fully get it), is that they are putting air into the plane to maintain the fourteen pounds per square inch necessary to keep us comfortable. Whatever the external pressure may be, the internal pressure must be the same or the cabin will collapse.

Paul in essence says that we should fill our lives with the Spirit of God and allow God’s presence to regulate the pressure.

I can almost hear some of you asking, “How does one become filled with the Holy Spirit?” If you’re a Christian, the Holy Spirit already lives inside of you. Allowing Him to have control of your daily life is a commitment you make every day. First you need to understand that this is something God wants us to do. In Ephesians 5:18, we are told to be “filled with the Spirit.” God would not ask us to do something that He does not show us how to do. So we then can take the next step of asking Him to fill us, based on His promise in 1 John 5:14-15 in which we are told that “if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him.” This is a straightforward proposition: Ask of God something that you know is His will, like being filled with the Spirit, and then you can know that He not only hears your request, but will also answer it because what you have asked is already His will. In practical terms, a person can pray a prayer similar to the following:

 Lord Jesus, I have been in control of my life, but I now want Your Spirit to be the One who runs my life. I am giving You all of my rights. Please take control of every area of my life. Whenever I am tempted to take back control, please point that out to me and help me have the courage and strength to resist successfully any temptation or desire to take control again of my life.

Show me how to live on top of my circumstances and not under them. Help me keep my eyes on You, Lord Jesus, instead of on my problems. Let me see You, Father, as the One who can and will meet every need of my life. Let me be sufficient in You and not in my own abilities and strengths. Help me to have the right balance between living in Your control and exercising diligence as I respond to each facet of my life. Whenever pressures come that have been unbearable or debilitating before, show me Your perspective -- anything I’ve been doing wrong or thinking improperly. Then show me how to correct my faulty actions and thoughts so that I can continue to walk in Your Spirit’s control. Thank You that You want to do these things in my life even more than I do. Remind me of that when my faith gets weak.

You can live successfully in any and all circumstances, including the severe pressures that come with the Rat Race. The choice is yours. Depend upon your own strength and abilities or depend on the Holy Spirit flowing through you, who keeps you anchored to the Lord and the solid Rock of Jesus, and keeps you “Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith” (Heb. 12:2).

On the journey with you,
Pastor Glen