This life is not mine

Strange how different things in our lives get us to take a serious look at where we are going and where we've been. Sometimes it's a traumatic event and other times it's just a simple thought or a song on the radio.

The last couple of week's trials and adventures have gotten me thinking. I've been focusing on work and trying to take care of financial responsibilities and have ignored the really important things in my life. I've become a friend to the world, seeking what it has to offer. I'm grateful that a close friend, possibly my mentor, John & I had some time to sit down and talk recently. He helped me to understand that my choices need to be more carefully thought out. I've been making the wrong things important lately. I've been in the pursuit of financial freedom...when it's my freedom from sin that I should be worried about. Christ didn't die on the Cross for me to be good in business. He died so that I would be saved from the wrath of our Heavenly Father. I have been ignoring that and putting my heart (not 100% either) into business. I haven't been honoring and loving my wife the way I am called to....but rather treating her like an employee and burdening her with my frustrations. How quickly I have forgotten that if I am caring for the important things in my life that God will help in taking care of the rest.

How quickly I have forgotten that apart from Him, I am incapable of anything...but I've been trying my best to go it alone. I am eternally grateful that God at times will step back and let us fall...then come beside us, pick us back up and continue walking with us. The biggest tragedy is that I have lost focus that this life is not mine to live...but God's glory that I was created. I was meant to live for so much more, as the song goes...but that "so much more" was the wrong thing that I was searching for. Money. Not for riches, but just the freedom to know that bills are paid and that my wife and I could enjoy a night out from time to time. That's not what life is about, but that's what I was making mine about. I need to stop and re-focus. My life should not be about me...it should be about what I was created for, glorifying God. All the rest of it will fall into place. There will be peace, joy, love, patience, kindness and many other things in my life if I'd just stop living it for myself.

I hope you all have a great weekend. It's time for me to step away and pray for the strength to not want to be a friend to the world, but a person whose life reflects it's true meaning. I pray also for my family, friends and those with whom I've ever had contact that they too would know the joy that comes from a life of glorifying God.