As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. (1 Peter 1:14 TNIV)
Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will. (Romans 12:2 TNIV)
Yesterday I wrote about ‘goals’ and how we all need to focus on the same goal or no-one end up achieving anything of worth. Unfortunately achieving worthwhile goals usually takes time, planning and patience. If your goals didn’t take time to achieve then they probably aren’t goals, they are just things we want to get done, hence ‘Goals require Patience’
I am the most impatient man in the world, just ask my wife. I want things to get done now, I hate to wait. If someone doesn’t have the job done in the time I decide is adequate, I just do it myself and get angry at them.
The word ‘Patience’ comes from two words ‘Passion’ and ‘Long’, to sustain passion for a long time is ‘Patience’.
To achieve goals we must continue in patience, sustain our passion for a long time. For me as a man who hates to wait, who just does it himself if others take too long, who has ideas and finds a way to make it happen now instead of waiting for approval, it is a really hard road to achieving my goals. If I had patience, my goals would have time to grow and they would mean far more to me when they finally come to light.
Without patience and perseverance, your goals will diminish, as your passion dies out.
‘Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.’ Galatians 6:9 NIV
‘Since God chose you to be the holy people he loves, you must clothe yourselves with tenderhearted mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Make allowance for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others’.Colossians 3:12-13 NLT
Just a Thought
Clear vision and direction is one of those things that we all lack, badly, I know that I am the most impatient man in the world and I have many examples to back up that claim. I am impatient at work, impatient at home, impatient with my wife, impatient with all my friends, impatient with everything. This impatience clouds my vision, it draws me into a place of frustration and takes my eyes from the good things the have happened and will happen and makes me focus on the negative that is frustrating me. But I think that part of the problem in vision is that we keep it locked away, it’s all in our mind, people can’t read our mind, we never get around to communicating effectively what the vision and goals are, what the result would be.
If we can’t communicate effective what the specific goal is, our impatience and resentment towards others will only grow when it isn’t done ‘our way’.
Take work as an example, I am not the manager or boss of anyone at work but that doesn’t stop me from expecting things from other people, after all a good team should be relying on others. The issue is, my goals for work are very different to my boss’ goals, who’s goals are different to another persons goals, who’s different again to another person’s goals. We each expect that others will be working towards achieving goals, but sometimes we forget that our goalposts can be in very different position to each other, sometimes they are even in a completely different direction.
Seeing as though we are talking ‘Goals’ it only seems right to bring AFL football into it. The goal of football is to score goals, and to score more than the other team, if the whole teams isn’t focusing on achieving the goal of scoring goals then they will end up with none, if every person on the team took it upon themselves to just score their own goals in the place that they think the goal posts are, there would be every man and his dog in the forward line ready to kick with no-one in the centre to even get the play started and none left left in defence to stop the opposition from running rampant and scoring their own goals at the other end. If we don’t all agree on where the goal posts are then you are going to have a whole bunch of behinds on the scoreboard because people aren’t kicking straight. I think that at times we focus on scoring our own goals more highly than scoring goals for the team where the real posts are set.
Sometimes we forget the mission, the real goal…’that every man, woman, boy and girls would know the love, grace ad salvation of Jesus Christ.’ If we spend too long looking at our own goals, new buildings, new notoriety, new leadership positions, more money, we forget the reason we even have what we have, Jesus.
If Jesus isn’t the goal and we aren’t working as a team to bring others to him, Satan will be down the other end kicking goals for himself while we fight about where the goals posts really are.
“Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations,baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Matt 28: 19-20
“Obviously, I’m not trying to win the approval of people, but of God. If pleasing people were my goal, I would not be Christ’s servant” Galatians 1:10
Just a Thought
‘Nothing Can Separate Us from God’s Love 31 What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? 32 Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else? 33 Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? No one—for God himself has given us right standing with himself. 34 Who then will condemn us? No one—for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honor at God’s right hand, pleading for us. 35 Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? 36 (As the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.”[o]) 37 No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us. 38 And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,[p] neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. 39 No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.’ Romans 8
It has been a great day today, I really didn’t have to teach all day. My year 12′s looked after themselves and did practice, my supervision time I spent sitting talking to year 12′s in the study centre and got a bit more insight into their world and then I finished off the day with a double year 7 music class but 2/3 of the class was on an excursion so we did nothing either. It was a really easy day of teaching but I am so tired. Doing nothing wears me out.
Why is it that doing nothing makes us more tired than less tired? I could sleep all weekend and still wake up more tired than if I was running around all weekend.
Is it because when we rest we aren’t actually resting? It is my over stressing about situations so far into the future that stops me from really resting.I can’t switch it off, I could sit all day but my mind does not turn off. Today as I sit in my office I have stressed about:
Em’s first day of placement which I have no control over, organising a Yr 12 day trip that is still almost 3 months away, getting new music which I don’t need for at least 4 weeks, mhat I am doing with my life, how to keep Em’s happy this weekend, what else can I do to help Em with her assignments, etc. All these things are either out of my control or so far off that they don’t warent the level of stress I have applied to then today.
Jesus tells us to come to him and we will be given rest, I can do that. I can easily have physical rest and comfort because my time is fairly free but what I need more right now is a rest from my brain, a break in my routine that I gives me time to relax and do something I enjoy, not something I enjoy because I want to be better at it, something that I really enjoy. I need hobby, I need a proper sleep, I need to learn to say no, I need to step away from my stress, I need to just be still and know that he is God.
God has the answers, God has the rest, it is just us that needs to accept it and embrace it. I’m going to try hard to do just that this weekend.
Just a thought
“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord and whose trust is the Lord. For he will be like a tree planted by the water, that extends its roots by a stream and will not fear when the heat comes; but its leaves will be green, and it will not be anxious in a year of drought nor cease to yield fruit.” Jeremiah 17:7-8
Gday, It seems a very appropriate way to start my blog on Anzac Day. For those that are overseas (and weren’t originally from Australia) Anzac day is a day we have over here to celebrate and remember the sacrifice of soldiers and other serviceman and women in the ‘Australian & New Zealand Army Corps’ during all the wars they were involved in.
We have a day off work, we buy badges to and pin them to our shirts (raising money for the Returned Serviceman and Servicewoman’s League, RSL), we have a parade and remembrance service in every capital city and almost every rural centre and we even force our shops to close (even if it is for only half a day).
Anzac Day means a lot of things to a lot of people, but unfortunately most of them are over 65, to me I think of my small number of family that served, in particular my Poppa who was above all else a great man and secondary to that a pilot in WWII, it is a day to reflect on how great these men and woman were to sacrifice so much so that I can stay ‘Young and Free’.
Unfortunately, as a younger generation I don’t think we understand it, I think during school we get it taught to us, but when we get into our 20′s it just becomes a holiday. No one my age would do what these guys did, sacrifice doesn’t exist in our generation. I know that at my school I have not heard a single thing about Anzac day this year, maybe it was focused at the primary school but I haven’t heard anything, if fact I am even second guessing whether I have the day off today.
Fortunately there has not been a massive war where the entire country has been under threat, we have wars going on but thankful they are not massive enough for it to affect those outside of the ‘Armed Service’, This means they are relatively ignored by the non vocal majority but they are also so unpopular with the vocal minority that no-one in leadership of the country would dare bring them up, for good or bad, in fear of being stoned by an angry mob. It almost goes completely against the motto that everyone spouts on Anzac Day ‘Lest We Forget’, it almost feels a bit more like ‘Lest We Forget… except for the other 364 days a year or if it isn’t convenient or if we’re too busy having a day off’.
I am so thankful for the sacrifice those great men and woman gave, and I am thankful that I don’t have to do the same thing because I don’t know that I’m man enough to do it.
Jesus taught sacrifice, Jesus taught love for your brother, Jesus taught us to obey, I can’t help but feel that the generations past knew how to be Jesus far better than we do now. It doesn’t matter how many technological advancements we make in bringing Jesus to the mass populous, without the fundamental love, sacrifice and obedience modelled by Christ and these men and woman we are really just like a politician spouting empty ‘Lest we Forgets’.
I hate war but I can’t help but feel ripped off being born into this ‘Great Generation’ when I think we left Jesus back in the last one.
’There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends’. John 15:13
Just a Thought.
SASB 23
1. What shall I render to my God
For all his mercy’s store?
I’ll take the gifts he hath bestowed
And humbly ask for more.
2. The sacred cup of saving grace
I will with thanks receive,
And all his promise embrace
And to his glory live.
3. My vows I will to his great name
Before his people pay,
And all I have, and all I am,
Upon his alter lay.
4. Thy hands created me, thy hands
From sin have set me free;
The mercy that hath loosed my bands
Hath bound me fast to thee.
5. The God of all-redeeming grace,
My God, I will proclaim,
Offer the sacrifice of praise,
And call upon his name.
Charles Wesley (1707-88)
SASB 23
