Emergency State of Mind

 How do you live your one life like it isn't a state of constant emergency? How do you go through your days not giving into that human impulse that says you're in a continuous cycle of emotional 9-1-1 status? 

 Think about it, friend - for all the times you've been hurt, for all the times that suffering has hit you unexpectedly, for all the moments you've been led to doubt the goodness of God, for all the hours you've spent seeing through the eyes of your fears and neglected your faith - all these can begin to cause one to live in an unsettled way. And we then spend time rushing around to make up for what we've lost, or trying to get ahead before we run out of time, or just plain running - from God, from others, from living loved. 

 Life because about nothing more than just doing. We never just are. Have you ever thought of the fact that God created us as human "beings" rather than human "doings?"

We've made this whole journey about performing when existing is our goal. When all God really wants from us is to "glorify Him and enjoy Him forever," we've made it about money, time, sex, accomplishment, and so much else when what God's really after is our enjoyment of Him and our fulfillment of the Gospel-way. 

 Oh, friend! We have much to repent of - this frenetic way of living! Because it isn't really true living after all. We've sacrificed our true purpose on the altar of self-fulfillment and desire, leaving our first Love for the lesser things. We've taken things that are merely gifts to enjoy from God Himself and turned them into counterfeit gods that steal the glory which is rightly His. We have placed other things on the throne of our souls and, for that, we must be ashamed. 

 To answer how you live your life like it isn't an emergency - you live your one life in worship! You praise through your days. Because you only have a limited number of breaths in you. You only have a certain unknown amount of days that only God has control of. And why waste it by chasing frantically after what only leaves us empty? 

 After all, as precious a blessing as each of these things are, they really don't belong to us anyway. They are merely on loan to us because we can't take any of them with us. If we were honestly stripped of everything we had and left only with what mattered...could it, would it, be enough? Because isn't He enough? 

 As the holidays approach, as the speed of our world ever quickens...it's time we took a step back and evaluated how we "do life" His way. Perhaps, if we began to not live life like the next shoe will drop at any second - if we started taking time to thank as our first reaction instead of fear - if we so ordered our lives as to run on His timing instead of our own - just maybe we could lengthen time a bit. Our numbered days still remain the same but our approach to how we use them would change. Just maybe our money, our personal goals, our relationships, our time would be spent in pursuit of deeper knowledge of God and the advancement of His will instead of the break-neck pace of always reaching but always failing at what is most important. 

 Christian author Francis Chan points out that the thing he most fears is, "succeeding at things that don't matter." I think we could all stand to take a hard look at how we live and ask ourselves if we're succeeding at what's relevant in the world's eyes but failing at what matters most.