Basic Truths | Finding God in Everyday Life

  I was thinking back to my college days recently. I went to school halfway across the country so I didn’t get to see my family from the time I left in August until I came home for Christmas break. There weren’t any cell phones back then and long-distance calls were expensive. Still, I remember calling my parents from time to time, occasionally for some particular purpose but normally just to hear their voices and share some time with them.   I usually flew home at the end of term. I still remember walking down the passageway at the airport terminal, trying to catch the earliest glimpse I could of my parents. I remember how excited I was to see them and how happy they were to see me. As many times as I came home, I never lost that joy of first sight.   We will all pass from this life some day. When we do, we’ll be in heaven and get to see Jesus face-to-face and know that we’ll never have to say goodbye. Our joy will be complete. In the meantime, we should “call home” freq...

  I get aggravated at aggressive, dangerous drivers. They recklessly swerve in and out at high speed, cutting off other drivers and putting them and others at risk for an accident. And for what? Many times I see them just ahead of me in traffic several miles down the road. I’ve often wanted to ask them, “What are you going to do with the extra 2 or 3 minutes you saved by driving like an idiot?”   Unless you’re one of those people (and you know who you are), you’re probably saying “Amen!” right now. The truth of the matter is, though, that many of us, myself included, behave in a similar fashion in other areas of our lives. We may be aggressively pursuing more money, a better job, a bigger house, a new car, or any one of a number of other worldly things without giving any thought to the consequences to ourselves and those around us. Whenever we focus on what we want without consideration of what God wants or how it affects others, we find ourselves on a slippery slope that...

  We went to the Modern Art Museum in Fort Worth last weekend. I’m not generally a fan of modern art but I can appreciate some of it. I found it helpful to read the description of what the artist was trying to say before I looked at a work. Otherwise, most of what I looked at seemed meaningless on first glance.   Christians are called to be discerning. A useful definition of discernment is, “The skill of understanding and applying God’s Word with the purpose of separating truth from error and right from wrong” (from “The Discipline of Spiritual Discernment”, by Tim Challies).   We should filter everything that we read and hear by seeking God’s viewpoint on it. Only in this manner will we find truth and direction, because life in the absence of God is meaningless on a spiritual level. Solomon in his wisdom understood this, “I have seen all the things that are done under the sun; all of them are meaningless, a chasing after the wind” (Ecclesiastes 1:14).   Pau...

  I studied Investment Management in college and subsequently managed investments for a few people during the business part of my career. When you are managing someone else’s money, you have a fiduciary responsibility to your client, to act according to their best interest and according to their goals and priorities. You exercise a degree of care above that which you might have for your own personal investments, because someone has entrusted their savings to you.   All that we have, all that we can do, is through the grace and providence of God. We are stewards of the gifts that God has blessed us with. When we view our possessions and abilities as belonging to God and not ourselves, we see them in a different light. It may lead us to invest them according to God’s priorities and not our own.   Stewardship is not an optional add-on to the Christian life but a mandatory obligation– God expects a return from us. Isaiah Chapter 5 tells about the landowner who planted...

  I loved to play board games when I was a kid. One of my favorites was Monopoly. I was thrilled when I got to be the banker and handle the money but, at the end of the game, I had to put it all back into the box until next time.   When we look at it from the viewpoint of eternity, all the money we have now is just Monopoly money. There’s one difference – we go into the box when our days are over, but the money stays behind!   Our money and all our other possessions are of no value to us when we die, just something to pass on to someone else. They have no eternal value, except to the extent that we use them for the benefit of, and under the direction of, God and His Kingdom.   We are called to distance ourselves from the pursuit of money for its own sake. Paul advised Timothy, “Godliness with contentment is great gain…..For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil” (1 Timothy 6:6, 6:10). There is nothing wrong with working hard to provide for our fam...