One Degree

Today I want to talk about direction and goals.  First of all, is it important to have goals?  Well for some it may not be.  I know some people who's personalities really don't lend themselves to concrete goals.  They meander through life and enjoy it.  For them it is a peaceful way to live and goals really mess things up.  For me, that would be a difficult way to live but I must admit that there are days when I envy them.  I am not a hard core goal nut who has to have a goal for everything in life (at least I don't think I am) but I do think that goals are important.

After all, if you don't know where you are going, how will you know when you get there right?  That's where I think goals are important.  For many of you who read this blog, your goal might be to graduate high school or college.  You may have never thought of it that way but if you are in high school, your goal is definitely to get out right?

Well after we get out of college goals can be a little more vague.  For most, the goal is to get married, raise a family, provide for retirement, etc.  But I know so many people who really don't have any plan for their lives and after we are adults, I think that is not healthy.  Let's say your goal is to get out of debt.  What is the plan?  How are you going to cut spending or increase your income?  Is that plan realistic.  Let me take you back a couple of years to when I first really started financial goals.  Back then, I used budgets to justify going further into debt.  Harry Potter movies were more realistic than my budgets.  So are your goals something you can measure?  Remember if you don't have a destination, how will you know when you get there?

Now I want to get to my point for this e-mail.  Sometimes we set goals for ourselves and we come up with good plans to get where we want to be.  For many of us, it is to be good parents and take care of our children.  For me, one of my biggest goals is to walk closer with God.  Now that goal is a great one but it is a little hard to measure.  When I was losing weight, I could step on a scale and the number it displayed would tell me if I was progressing toward my goal or not.  But with my walk with God, I didn't have as concrete or measurable goal.

But here is what I noticed recently.  I have drifted a little away from the Lord.  Now I didn't backslide to hell by any means and I didn't fall into sin or deny Christ or anything close to that.  However, I did notice I was not a peace.  I hit times that weren't as fun as they should be and I couldn't figure out why.  While this isn't the only reason for my frustration, it is an important one.  I knew I had to get back to a closer walk with the Lord.  As I made a fresh commitment to walk closer to Him, I noticed that I didn't have to turn and run back to where I last felt close.  See He followed me on my journey.  The Bible says He will never leave you nor forsake you and He didn't.  He was right there when I went looking for him.  It was great and definitely refreshing.

One of the big questions in my mind was how did I get to this place were I had lost my peace.  I didn't hurt anyone; cuss anyone; do wrong that I knew of so what happened.  The answer is I got one degree off course.  I didn't take His presence seriously enough in my day to day life.  I quit praying as much as I should.  I quit reading His word and my daily devotional with as much attention as I should.  The next thing I knew I was out of peace.  Did you know that if an airplane starts flying from Fort Worth to Paris and it is only one degree off course it can wind up miles and miles from it's goal?  Well that's exactly what I think happened to me.

So let me leave you with this.  What are your goals in life?  Have you ever woken up to find yourself way off course?  If so, all you have to do is rededicate to your goals and set your course straight.  Then take time regularly to check and see if you are still headed where you want to go.  If you aren't simply fix the course.  Many of you may not be where you want to be with Christ at this particular moment.  If that's so, getting back to where you need to be with him is easy because even if you quit paying attention to Him, He never left your side.  If that's you, would you pray this simple prayer.  "Father, please forgive me.  I strayed from my course with you.  Please help me get back into Your perfect will for my life."  If you prayed that prayer, then you are back at the right place with God.  Now search His will out for your life and get ready for the adventure of a lifetime.

That's another Opinion of the Minion

What Have You Done Lately?

Words.  We hear them everyday from all sorts of places.  We hear songs on the radio, watch TV shows, talk to other people and we even hear our own words.  I think I heard that the average person speaks 10,000 words a day.  Which means that the average person hears at least that many every day and probably more.  That's a lot.

So today I want to talk about words, indirectly anyway.  See we hear things all the time and we say things all the time.  I tell my girlfriend, D, that I love her regularly.  Those words sound great and they feel great to say.  What's even better is when I hear her tell me the same thing back.  It feels awesome and I know she means them.  But how do I know she means what she says?  Or how does she know that I mean what I say?  The answer is really simple.  It doesn't require a great leap of faith or many hours of prayer and fasting to figure it out.

All D has to do to know if my words are true is watch my actions.  Do they line up with my words?  I tell her that I love her and then I do my best to show her that I love her.  I consciously consider whether or not my actions are lining up with my words.

This same thing applies to other places as well.  If I tell someone that I will do something and I don't then my actions and words don't line up.  I remember several months ago, I promised to take all the kids to a place called Main Event here in Fort Worth.  This place has bowling, laser tag and video games and the kids love it.  Now when the day arrived, I was feeling a little sick and I didn't want to go.  When I told the kids, my daughter said, "But Dad, you gave your word."  I had a choice to make.  I could either go back on my word and do something else or I could go and feel a little sick in the process.  Let me just say that while I didn't feel good, I wasn't completely sick or I would have stayed home.  I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't be smart and weigh the consequences of the situation.  But in this case, I should have taken the kids and we ultimately did.

Let me turn this blog in a slightly different direction and I will get to my point for today.  Many of us say that we are Christians but unfortunately our actions don't line up very well with our words.  I heard a story and whether or not it is true, it illustrates a good point.  A pastor of a church had a friend who ran a restaurant close to the church.  One day he and his friend were talking and the restaurant owner said to the pastor, "You know I have a lot of trouble getting people to work on Sunday."

"Why is that?" the pastor asked.

"Because the people from your church are the worst tippers and treat the wait staff rudely," he said.

I can't tell you how many times I have heard of Christians that I would never want to do business with because of the lack of integrity that I have seen.

So here is the real point.  The bible says in John 3:16, "For God so loved the world that He gave...."  If we are going to say that we are Christians, it's high time we started giving.  When we go to a place to eat, the waiters ought to fight with each other to see who gets our table because we are such generous people.  When is the last time you gave to someone without expecting anything in return?  I hope the answer is recently.  But if not, it's time to make a change.  Remember God gives to us every day and he does it because he loves us.  If we are telling people that we are Christians, isn't it high time our actions lined up with our words?

That's another Opinion of the Minion