The potential distractions and available devotions in this life are seemingly too numerous to count and every one of them requires the freedom of choice to pursue. For example, career and life paths are available on varying degrees to almost everyone, but what drives the choices to be made in these things? Could it be money, fame, or maybe just personal pleasure in general? ...
I think an individual's personal set of values strongly guides all of those possible choices for most people, but how many people do you suppose ever take the time to really examine their own standard of values and their order of priority? To do so requires some honest, thoughtful soul searching, but since those values tend to be the baseline we use to sift our opportunistic choices through in decision making, their order and priority tend to be critical toward not only the legacy we'll create, but our possible determinate future. Setting them based on the world we now inhabit, we may not know the true consequences of their order on the future, but invariably, they're worth the investment of some time.
I can't help but wonder if the reason that so many people seem to be unsettled - drifting in and out of relationships, jobs and situations, may be due to the fact that they've never taken the time to truly examine, develop and prioritize that value oriented basis for advancing their life decisions toward profitable ends for the benefit of their own lives. For example, a man with no moral values other than the immediate satisfaction of his own personal need will think nothing of stealing from, or hurting someone else. The consequence of that decision could land him in jail or even a stint in longer term confinement, a further potential consequence of remorse, or even guilt if - he comes to have any moral conscience. It's really pretty simple - our choices have consequences... but what guides our choices? Our values.
Nearly sixty years of my own choices and experiences have brought me to hold one particular set of values and with the highest priority. I've not always served them unfailingly, but they've always served me that way when I've been faithful to them. I've determined that there's only one thing in all of life that deserves focus and value above all other verbs and nouns in life. Through that one thing, all other aspects of life become satisfying, fulfilled and continually generating gratitude for life - true, intimate and submissive relationship with the adoring-adjective laden Jesus Christ. We were created for this and above this, there can be no higher priority profitable to our legacy, our future... or our here and now.
When I'm truly following Christ, my values and priorities are set based on His - those both exampled by Him and taught to us through His divine revelation and dictated through a few chosen men that He trusted - that famous, most widely known of book, the Bible. I'm comfortable that many know of it, but fewer actually know it. Many can pull a verse from it to use as an illegitimate weapon, but far fewer know the power of it in understanding and context. Yet its power for life is real and the values taught within its pages are unfailingly profitable. It's the real manual for successful life that many claim to wish that they had, but neglect with careless disregard while still complaining.
We have but a short time on earth to discover what purpose we live for and to meet it. Our success in doing so is dependent on those values and priorities that we find and hold in real relationship with the God that created us - the same one that authored that neglected book, in order to lead us straight to Him. Every word is a source of illumination on an otherwise dark path and every earnest step taken to gain it's understanding is a walk both with and toward it's author - toward a successful life... A life set apart.
Someone needs to hear it: Character counts.
"No, O people, the LORD has told you what is good, and this is what he requires of you: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God." Micah 6:8 (NLT)
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