Living with an eternal perspective

This week God has really been talking to me about some cool stuff.  How many of you know when God is speaking to you (by the way, it happens a lot more than you know) and you can’t hear him, the deficiency is not on his end.  There is a 99.99999999999% chance….ok, maybe 100% chance that the deficiency is on your end!  Think about certain areas of your life that aren’t lining up with God and His Word and through prayer start to get rid of those things and allow God to bring healing, deliverance, and restoration.  Once you have done your part, then God will meet you right at your level and completely blow you away!  It is then, that you will be able to know what the voice of God sounds like!

Well, I have sensed the Lord really speaking to me this week about living with an eternal perspective on life.  It is so easy to get caught up in the everday trappings of life that draw our attention away from Jesus and His plan for each individual.  Many times our motives might be right but our actions tell the world that the visible and material things are more important to us than what is to come!  Here is a great illustration found in Luke 12:16-21.  Without spending too much time explaining it, Jesus is telling us about a man who had a bountiful crop and didn’t have enough room to comfortably store it.  He then built bigger storage units and was able to live relaxed and comfortable knowing he would never have to worry about what he would eat or drink again.  He had everything he could ever need (if I could use the music that came up everytime Jaws was about to attack a victim, this is exactly where I would play it).  What a dangerous place to be in!  Jesus said that this man is a fool because his perspective on life is extremely shallow.  It resides completely in the ‘here and now’.  There are three verses back to back in Luke 9 where I believe Jesus is trying to tell us to switch our life perspective on eternity rather than on the ‘here and now’.  Jesus says in Luke 9:23-25 “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily , and follow me.  For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.  What good is it for a man to gain the whole world and yet lose or forfeit his very self.” These three verses all contain the element of decreasing so God can increase (he must deny himself daily, whoever loses his life for Jesus will save it, to gain the world and lose the inner soul is a waste).  I sense that if we live our lives not in the here and now, but with an eternal perspective, God will not only be honored, but we will actually begin to comprehend the purpose of our lives here on earth.

The question I have been asking myself all week is “how is my life not only glorifying God but how is it lining up with the life of Jesus?”  His life had one purpose and one purpose only and it was to bridge the gap between God and his human creation.  It was obvious that Jesus’ life modeled a life with an eternal perspective.  Everything he did was in light of what his Father did.  Everything he said was in light of what His Father said.  Jesus knew his life purpose and without an eternal perspective, Jesus was not who he said he was.  Thank the Lord, Jesus did live his life with an eternal perspective and I believe that God wants the same from you and me.

Let’s spend time this week combing through the areas of our life where we need a little more of Jesus and a little less of us.  When we view our situations in life and the areas of our life that are day in and day out through the filter of eternity, we will have hope, we will have a clear picture of our priorities, and we will be closer to our goal in life of becoming more like Jesus everyday!