Category: Christian Living

I’m not sure I’ve answered the point regarding everything we do has eternal consequences?  I may have, but I think I’ll take the time for one more shot at it.  Until we start to believe this is true, we cannot truly buy into the points that follow.  I’m going to dig deep here, but it will pan out in the end.

In Matthew 25:31-46, Jesus foretells a story of His return, and how He will separate those that ministered unto Him on the earth and those that did not.  Now, I’m talking about full-time, pastoral ministers.  Jesus spoke of those who met His needs – hunger, thirst, clothing; meeting needs, physical as well as spiritual, is ministering.  But He isn’t referring to those who saw Him in His mortal body while He walked the earth.  He means the people we pass on the path of life every day; to minister to them is to reach a hand to Him.

Continue reading “Eternity – 4” →

I think one of the hardest points for us to lay hold of is that every act of every day has eternal consequence. We look at some of the rote, mundane, and seemingly trivial elements of our daily routines and consider them the warm up before we can step up to the pitcher’s mound and throw the curve balls, sliders and fastballs for the real game. Even then we consider most of the “important” parts of our days to be too regulare too earthly to have spiritual significance.

You could this is a sort of spiritual near-sightedness; or maybe more accurately, near-blindness. We can only see the immidate results of our actions, and therefore have little trouble with living in the present.  However, we do so at the expense of not only a fast-approaching future, but also that of our eternal future.

Continue reading “Eternity 3 – Spiritually Near-Sighted” →

Do you ever get the feeling that life is just a routine that you almost have to suffer through day in and day out?  From a basic perspective, your daily life is little different from the lives of those around you: you wake up, maybe eat breakfast, take your shower and make yourself presentable (or at least bearable), off to work, try to eat lunch, more work, eat supper (because you have to eat at least one meal each day), try to spend time with the family/spouse/significant other, or maybe be involved in some kind of ministry, watch 24 or NCIS or Lost, and then head for bed, only to wake up the next morning and do it all over again.

After a while – be it weeks, months, or years – you start to feel like your routine is all there is.  It isn’t that you don’t like your job, or your family is terrible, or church isn’t nice; the problem is that it seems empty, pointless, just part of the here and now.  But life can – and should – be so much more.

Of course, we say that all the time, don’t we?  But who is really experiencing it?  How can everything we do in life, be it work or ministry or love, have eternal consequence when we have a hard time believing that these things make a difference in the present?

Continue reading “Living in Light of Eternity – 2” →

We live in an interesting age, don’t we?  We have gadgets and gizmos galore that supposedly exist to make our lives easier and more efficient.  CEO’s of large corporations bring home salaries that are “gross” compared to what the workers in those companies are given.  The stock markets are at record highs while time with our children, our spouses, our Creator, or even for ourselves dwindles down year by year.

Of course, I’m talking mostly about Western Christianity.  But it seems that we have forgotten to live as we are encouraged by Scripture to live.  We’re not just talking about family neglect and workaholism and greed, though these are a few of the bigger factors we have to contend with.  In reality there are many other symptoms, factors and warning signs that we have stopped living in light of eternity.

Continue reading “Living in Light of Eternity – Intro” →