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Our immortality symbols (our possessions, our accomplishments, or even our children’s accomplishments) are not about the actual item, but about the glory that each thing bestows upon us…. In our society we have the problem of listening to the voice of self which tells you that you should live for yourself. The voice of self-love is even more powerful than the voice of the serpent. Pride and image-management are key self-love aspects of our American living. Though we use image-management to try to trick people to thinking we have the perfect life – the imperfect life is the only life that anyone lives, and when we accept that fact – we are on the right step to more depth with God.
–David Goetz

…and the right step toward better & healthier relationships with others.

There are two parts to accepting the fact that the imperfect life is the only life that anyone lives. The first is to stop hiding behind the false facade that we create to try to trick others into thinking we have the perfect life. We know our life isn’t perfect, but we want others to think it is. We want them to be envious of us, because we thnk that will make us feel better in some way. But it is an empty victory when we “cheat” or “lie” to gain a victory.

The second is to realize that everyone else’s life is imperfect too. Facebook, social media, and other similar tools can become our own personal marketing machines, and they lead us into comparison, competition, and ultimately to envy and covet what we see in other people’s lives. To find contentment in life, we must realize that all of our lives are similar – each one of us are an imperfect person married to another imperfect person and we are raising imperfect children in an imperfect world. We work with imperfect co-workers and live near imperfect neighbors. But all of this is ok, if we will accept the truth, take down the masks, and start living the imperfect life together, allowing God – the only Perfect One – to hold us all together loving one another in our imperfectness.

So today, realize the truth that the imperfect life is the only life that anyone lives. Take off your own mask, tear down the false walls, and start being real with other people. And strive to be content in your relationship with God – focusing on the intrinsic value you have in being a child of the Giver, rather than focusing more on the value you think you will get from your possessions and accomplishments.

God wants to remind us:
…What I have given, I can take away and restore when it pleases Me. What I give remains Mine, and thus when I take it away I take nothing that is yours, for every good gift and every perfect gift is Mine.
–Thomas à Kempis

God is the giver of gifts. We are the stewards. Too often we forget our roles and therefore we get fussy when something that he has given is taken away from us. But we must also remember that God is a great Father who dearly loves His children, and that perhaps He might take the item away because we have become too dependent upon it instead of upon Him.

As a good Father, He knows our every need, and He knows that our greatest need is Himself. If anything in our lives gets put into a position above Him, it is beneficial for us that He take it away, even if it is a good gift. Once we get our lives reoriented to Him, He has the power to restore the same good gift or perhaps an even better one. Let us trust Him with the giving of gifts knowing that He desires us to have an abundant life in Him. And let us strive to be good stewards, never elevating the gifts above the Giver!

Regarding our fear of sharing our faith due to people possibly asking us questions that we do not know the answers to:
Of course people will ask us questions that we can’t answer! What has that got to do with evangelism? The gospel does not need our aid in its defense; it is quite capable of defending itself. As Luther said, “Let us not be anxious, the gospel does not need our help; it is sufficiently strong of itself!”
–Rebecca Pippert

Yes, we need to stay sharp and prepared for peoples’ questions, if we can, through the study of God’s Word. However, we cannot know all things about the Bible, nor can we anticipate every single question that may come our way. What we can do is tell people the truth of what happened to us due to our relationship with Jesus: “He changed my life.”

As a Christian songwriter recently wrote:
“How do I know what I believe? Well, I’m not the same me, and that’s all the proof I need!”

Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; it empties today of its strength.
–Corrie Ten Boom

What a great statement.
The sorrow that is coming tomorrow won’t be stopped through your worry. Worry can’t change anything that happened in the past, and worry can’t prevent tragic things from occurring tomorrow. But there is one thing that worry does do in the present…

Worry empties today of its strength.

Your worry impacts you right now by tying you up in knots, by keeping you from moving forward due to fear, by removing your ability to function well due to anxiety.

That is why Peter tells us to “Give all your worries and cares to God, for He cares about you.”
Which is great news for all of us!

Throughout His ministry, Jesus attempted to keep people from publicly announcing Him as the Son of God or as the Messiah. But after His arrest He claims this to both the religious leaders and to Pilate. Why did He wait until moments before the crucifixion to begin plainly declaring who He was?

Many times before, Jesus had turned down the chance to declare himself. When healed people, disciples, and even demons recognized him as Messiah, he had hushed them up. In the days of popularity, when crowds chased him around the lake like fanatics pursuing a celebrity, he had fled. When these fans caught him, eager to coronate him on the spot, he preached a sermon so troublesome that all but a few turned away. Only on this day of his crucifixion, first before the religious establishment and then before the political, only when his claims would seem the height of absurdity, did he admit to who he was.

“The Son of God,” he told the religious powers, who had him in their grasp. “A king,” he told a Roman governor, who must have laughed aloud. A pitiful specimen, he probably reminded Pilate of one of Rome’s deranged who claimed to be Caesar. Weak, rejected, doomed, utterly alone — only then did Jesus think it safe to reveal himself and accept the title “Christ.” As Karl Barth comments, “He does not confess his Messiahship until the moment when the danger of founding a religion is finally past.”
–Philip Yancey

Certainly it must have seemed absurd to these leaders (who Jesus had finally allowed to arrest Him) to consider Jesus as Messiah. He was about to be crucified. He was now under their control (at least that was how it seemed to them). How ridiculous for Jesus to make such claims as to be the Son of God. And yet, when Jesus was raised up on the cross, He drew men to Himself for all eternity! The claims may have seemed ridiculous and absurd at the time, but when Jesus rose from the dead, He proved that He was exactly who He said He was!

That is why the disciples were radically transformed after the resurrection. And that is why He deserves my very life given in full obedience to Him – not only my service, but also my thoughts, my attitudes, my speech, my behavior – all of my life given to Him to use however He directs. I hope you have investigated the absurdity of Jesus’ claims and also come to the conclusion that He is exactly who He claimed to be. I hope you have decided to declare Him Lord of all of your life.

(and if you are wondering why I had a week hiatus from writing after almost four months of daily posts… well, my computer died on me! Last Sunday it worked on Sunday morning, but then on Sunday afternoon… kaput! I had to go buy a new computer, had to get all the information from the dead computer extracted and moved to the new one, etcetera etcetera…. So it took the full week to get everything moved over to a new computer and back on track with posting again! Hopefully I won’t have any other unexpected interruptions in the near future!)