Do Work Son!

I was looking at 1 Timothy 6 and as Paul is guiding Timothy and telling him how to guide the church in Ephesus, he talks about Christians in slavery. In the first two verses of chapter 6, he is instructing the church about how slaves should treat their masters. I made it a point to apply the principle of treating my boss with full respect and doing everything I could to serve God by serving him. This brought to mind other verses about work throughout the day like Colossians 3:22-24. Keeping verses like this in my head as I was working and making an effort to apply them to everything I did gave all the different activities of my day significant meaning because it seemed like everything I did was impacting the Kingdom of God. Digging through scripture and finding morsels like this, that impact the way that you go through your day is incredibly rewarding and just one of those things that you have to stop and thank God for.

What if?

This week I have been faced with a lot of what if questions for some reason...maybe it means I should be thinking about some things. I just want to post a few of the questions so that maybe other people can ponder them with me, and if you feel up to it, offer some insight to help out with these.


What if...

• God is tired of us being internal with our worship?
• We took our relationship with Christ and what that means for our lives with us everywhere we went instead of sectioning off who we are in different places?
• We decided to go to different places than people would normally associate with us as Christians?
• We truly reached out to everyone that we come in contact with?
• We burst out of the "Christian bubble" and the stereotype associated with that?
• We were as radical as Jesus was?
• We prayed like the world depended on it?

Like I said, these are some questions that I have been wrestling with and chewing on this week. There are no right or wrong answers, but I would love to hear what you think, and maybe some ideas will come out of this that can be used in our day-to-day ministry.

If Your Time Ain't Been Nothing But Money

One of my new favorite songs by Switchfoot is "American Dream", one of the lines in the song says "if your time ain't been nothing but money, I'm starting to feel pretty bad for you honey!" Being that I am a business major, I meet a lot of people who have this kind of mindset. It really disturbs me that people can see their lives as meaningless aside from the fact that they will have a massive salary when they graduate and get a good job. Don't get me wrong, I don't think that there is anything wrong with making money or having a career where you make a lot of money. I have a problem when people determine their personal worth by the number that will be associated with their starting salary or their bank account. I understand that a lot of great things for God's kingdom are accomplished because there are people with money to finance activities that bring glory to the Father and reach people who do not know God. I just hope and pray that I will maintain these convictions as I progress in my career and that I would inspire others who will have a lot of wealth in this world to share that with others in the name of Jesus. I want my life to be more about the relationships that I will build with people and the ways that I will serve God's kingdom rather than how much money I will make or the kind of benefits that I will have. I would rather be concerned with pleasing God and remembering what Mark 8:36 says.

Mark 8:36
"What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?"

Obedience and Trust?

I have been thinking a lot about obedience and trusting God recently. I have noticed that the more I listen, the more that He shows me how I can be obedient to him. I have noticed that by being more obedient, God can do some incredible things through me for His kingdom. An example of the kind of obedience and trust that I am talking about is the kind of trust and obedience that Joshua displayed when he marched around Jericho for 7 days without saying anything, with the understanding that at the end of it all, the city would be taken. Trust like that would be one thing, but almost as incredible as the miracle of the walls falling down is that, because of Joshua's trust in God and the people's trust in Joshua, the nation of Israel went along with this whole business of marching around the city silently. With that kind of obedience to God, what can He do with us today?