A Christians Personal Perspective Every New Year, many people evaluate their achievements during the past year and assess what they should do in the coming new year. Then, they make a New Year resolution perhaps in many cases avoid the mistakes and blunders they committed in the past year and resolved to themselves not to repeat those in the new year. Others learned valuable and expensive lessons that will make them careful and cautious relative to those mistakes and blunders. There are those who have health issues and may be they have to slow down on their food intake and discipline their bodies to do more exercises. It is high time to save money and prioritize our expenses and purchases are also commendable New Year resolution. These are all good and beneficial to us if we are committed to resolve these personal issues. But how about our personal Christian life? Do we have some or many issues that we need to resolve this new year? How are we going to tackle these personal issues? What is or what are our priority or priorities as Christians whether we are in the sacred or secular service of God? To answer these questions, I would like to adopt Pauls perspective of his personal life and service to God. Paul said, But one thing I do: Forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth unto those things which are ahead. I press toward the goal to win the prize for the high calling which God has called me in Christ Jesus. Paul was talking about the hindsight, the insight and the foresight of his life and service to God as a Christian. He was focused on doing one thing and that was forgetting the past things and reaching out to those future things. What were the things that Paul was forgetting? I believe that he was referring to his zeal and his former religion. Paul just like so many people was sincere but he was sincerely wrong. Using commercial terms, he thought that he had profit or gain from his former religion and activities but when he met and knew Christ Jesus, those became a loss and worthless compared with the majesty of the knowledge of Christ. He thought that he had righteousness by the law but that was insufficient and insignificant compared with the righteousness by faith in Christ Jesus. In fact, he treated all those past things as dung which means manure. What did Paul mean by forgetting those past things? He meant that those past things must not influence or affect our present and future Christian life. I have heard many Christians who testify that they magnify the past things in their life rather than their present life in Christ. They say that they were former murderers or rapists or robbers or swindlers or drug addicts. I believe that these are unnecessary and inappropriate. Sometimes it is scary to get close to these people. You never know if there will be a recurrence of their former life. We believe that Christians are not suppose to tell a lie. But we dont have to tell the truth either. There are good truths and there are bad truths. We dont have to tell the bad truth especially when those are self incriminating and will besmirch our name and our family reputation. No one is asking anyway and they are not under oath in the court of law. I believe that our sinful past things have been covered and erased by the precious blood of Jesus Christ. What is the one thing that we are suppose to focus on doing this new year and in the coming years? The answer to this question is a real challenge to Christians and especially to Christian workers as a new year resolution. I always advise and encourage my fellow Pastors to focus on their work. We must not compromise our commitment, dedication and devotion to God and His calling for us with the things in this world. We need things alright but our priority is our pursuit and service of God. I have had many speaking invitations outside of our church but if those will conflict with our church services, I have to decline because I am committed to serve our congregation. I am loyal to our church congregation. I was a poor, very poor Pastor during the early years of our ministry. Most of our members were also poor because they came from a poor area called squatters colony. There were many times that I have to do some moonlighting in order augment our income and feed my wife and three children. I did not like to squeeze our members of money because they were poor too. I engaged into buy and sell of things like apparel and cars. I discovered how to be financially sufficient and stable through the economic principle espoused by Joseph in the Bible. I had sufficient capital through years of savings and some loans also and I ventured into small time real estate business. I was able to acquire two properties and built two houses. I was going into buy, build and sell those houses. Suddenly, I realized that this business was sucking me out of the ministry of pastoring. My ministry focus was diverted to this business. So, I quit the business and refocus on the pastoring ministry again. Let us remember as the song says, Only one life it will soon be past, only whats done for Christ will last. Things in this world will soon pass away and there is coming a judgment day. Jesus said, What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul. But seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things shall be added to you. Since then, when I refocused my life in pursuit and service of God, I need not worry about our sustenance, shelter, education for our children and even money because He had supplied all our needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus. Praise God! Hallelujah!
Posted on: Sun, 04 Jan 2015 02:26:35 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015