Spending some time alone with Jesus this morning, I reflected on the startling fact that the earth has now zipped around the sun 58 times since my lungs first gulped in air. Any way you look at it, I can’t have that many more “zips” left here. So I asked Jesus how He wanted me to spend the time I have remaining. This phrase immediately came to mind: “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.” Here’s how my next X number of years need to look:
Living from Him. I desperately want everything to have its origin in Him, for His desires and goals and dreams and agenda to be mine. No so-called bright ideas dreamed up by my brain, no foolish ambitions churned up by my flesh. I want to be led by the Spirit each moment of each day, in the direction He wants me to go, and for the reasons that He desires. I want to abandon myself to His purposes and lose myself in His will.
Living through Him. Oh, Christ in us, the hope of Glory! I want nothing else but “the power of an indestructible Life,” “the eternal Life that was with the Father,” to express itself through this body. No way do I want to be limited by my pitiful willpower or intellect or effort. I don’t want to detach myself from Jesus, try real hard, and report back to Him on how it went. As a brother said recently, “I can’t just keep God in the loop. God must be the loop.” I want to do Father’s work His way--by letting Father work in me and through me, waking up each morning with a clear affirmation of a decision already made that “I must become less, and Jesus must become more.”
Living to Him. The rest of my life must be a consistent obedience in a single direction: the Father. Bearing much fruit and showing myself to be Jesus’ disciple, “to my Father’s glory.” Laying up treasure in Heaven, so that when I see Him I will have something to cast down before His throne. Laboring with Jesus to build the Kingdom, so that one day, after He has destroyed all dominion, authority, and power, He can hand that Kingdom over to God the Father.
Now that would be time well spent, whether I have three minutes or three decades left!
But if those are going to be more than flowery words--flowery and sickening like cheap perfume--then they need to have a Real impact on how I spend my time, on the thoughts and emotions I allow to take root in my brain, on the words that come out of my mouth in conversation, on how I invest His resources…for the next few minutes, and the next few after that, until the day comes when my lungs take their last gulp of air. Can we together consecrate the present moment and the next and the next, to be “from, through, and to” Him? For Real?
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Wanted to share this with some few here and pass it along. I was very touched by the words and moved in the SPIRIT. Especially the last part, I do not want to be nothing more then "flowery words" I want my life to be a reflection of HIS. I want to live in obedience to HIM, looking to know HIS heart daily. How I spend my time, I think often of how much more could be accomplished for the KINGDOM if lived this way, from HIM, through HIM, and to HIM...
God bless
maryjane |
