How You Can Make Everyday Better
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Introduction
Live everyday with God-given purpose.
Live everyday with God-given purpose.
Christine Whelan, a professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison says, “ Coasting in life is existing, not thriving. The majority of young adults who say they don't have a clear picture of what they want in life also say they are existing but not thriving, while those with purpose more often say they are thriving."
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.
Christine Whelan, a professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison says, “ Coasting in life is existing, not thriving. The majority of young adults who say they don't have a clear picture of what they want in life also say they are existing but not thriving, while those with purpose more often say they are thriving.
In his best-selling book, Into Thin Air, John Krakauer tells the story of the ill-fated expedition to the summit of Mount Everest in 1996. In the book he mentions a member of the expedition named Yasuko Namba. Ms. Namba was a 46-year-old Japanese FedEx employee with a passion for climbing. She was an accomplished climber, having reached the summits of seven of the largest mountains on the planet. The only one left for her to conquer was Everest, the tallest in the world. She desperately wanted to get to the top of Everest as well.
This was her goal. So much so that Krakauer, who was also a member of the expedition, tells how "Yasuko was totally focused on the top. It was almost as if she was in a trance. She pushed extremely hard, jostling her way past everyone to the front of the line. She wanted to get to the top of Everest." Later that day, she made it. She accomplished her goal. She was the oldest person ever to make it to the highest point in the world.
Live everyday with God-given priorities.
Live everyday with God-given priorities.
William Breitbart, the chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at New York's Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, specializes in end-of-life care for terminally ill cancer patients. For much of his career Breitbart has been surrounded by suffering people who just want to die. Breitbart said, "When I walked in the room, my patients would say, 'I only have three months to live. If that's all I have, I see no value or purpose to living.'"
By the nineties, physician-assisted suicide was a hot topic in Breitbart's circles and beyond. As Breitbart heard more and more stories of assisted suicide, he began to wonder what specifically was driving the terminally ill to give up on life. The assumption had been that the ill chose to end their lives because they were in terrible pain. But when Breitbart asked patients why they wanted a prescription for assisted suicide, many said it was because they had lost meaning in life.
This was her goal. So much so that Krakauer, who was also a member of the expedition, tells how "Yasuko was totally focused on the top. It was almost as if she was in a trance. She pushed extremely hard, jostling her way past everyone to the front of the line. She wanted to get to the top of Everest." Later that day, she made it. She accomplished her goal. She was the oldest person ever to make it to the highest point in the world.
Later that afternoon, however, Yasuko and a number of other climbers were caught in a terrible blizzard. And as the icy winds blew, Yasuko succumbed to the exhaustion of her climb and froze to death. Yasuko Namba died agonizingly close in time and location to where she had gained her greatest prize. This helps explain her tragic mistake. According to Krakauer, Yasuko's fatal flaw was that she adopted the wrong goal. Yasuko's goal had been to get to the top of the mountain. What she wanted the most was to stand at the top of the world, and all of Japan cheered her when she did. But this was the wrong goal, and a frequent and sometimes fatal mistake that climbers make. The goal of climbing should never be to get to the top of a summit. Successful climbers know that the goal is not to get to the top—it is to get back down to the bottom. The tragedy is that Yasuko accomplished her goal. Against incredible odds she made it to the top of the mountain. But as she poured out her energy to get to the top, she did not save enough strength to make it back down. Yasuko failed because she adopted the wrong goal.
Breitbart knew he could treat depression with drugs or therapy, but he was stumped when it came to treating meaninglessness. "What I suddenly discovered," Breitbart explained, "was the importance of meaning—the search for meaning, the need to create meaning, the ability to experience meaning—was a basic motivating force of human behavior."
Christine Whelan, a professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison says, “ Coasting in life is existing, not thriving. The majority of young adults who say they don't have a clear picture of what they want in life also say they are existing but not thriving, while those with purpose more often say they are thriving.”
You don’t really begin to live until you live with purpose. Until then, you’re just existing. Most people in the world are busy just trying to get buy. There is no grand purpose that drives them. But life wasn’t meant to be that way.
Living everyday for Christ is where you will discover not just a purpose, but your God-given purpose.
For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.
Your purpose is to display God’s greatness by the way that you speak, think and act. Your purpose is to live in such a way that people come to know something about how amazing God is. And what’s so amazing is that as you display God’s goodness and grace and compassion to others, you experience those things yourself.
Live everyday with God-given priorities.
Live everyday with God-given priorities.
Christopher Parkening, considered to be the world's greatest classical guitarist, achieved his musical dreams by the age of thirty. By then he was also a world-class fly-fishing champion. However, his success failed to bring him happiness. Weary of performances and recording sessions, Parkening bought a ranch and gave up on the guitar. But instead of finding happiness after getting away from it all, his life became increasingly empty. He wrote, "If you arrive at a point in your life where you have everything that you've ever wanted and thought that would make you happy and it still doesn't, then you start questioning things. It's the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I had that and I thought, Well, what's left?"
Live everyday with God-given priorities.
Live everyday with God-given priorities.
While visiting friends, he attended church and put his faith in Christ. Parkening developed a hunger for Scripture and was struck by : "Whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God." He explains, "I realized there were only two things I knew how to do: fly fish for trout and play the guitar. Well, I am playing the guitar today absolutely by the grace of God … I have a joy, a peace, and a deep-down fulfillment in my life I never had before. My life has purpose … I've learned first-hand the true secret of genuine happiness."
His purpose wasn’t to play guitar. It was to play guitar for the glory of God. That’s when fulfillment came. When you live everyday for Jesus that’s when you begin to live a life of purpose. That’s when you begin to discover why you’re here. But living everyday for Jesus doesn’t just enable you to live with purpose.
Live everyday with God-given priorities.
Live everyday with God-given priorities.
Our lives are filled with gadgets we can't use (automatic sprinklers, GPS devices, fancy blenders), instructions we can't follow (labels on medicine bottles, directions for assembling toys or furniture) and forms we can't decipher (tax returns, gym membership contracts, wireless phone bills). Every facet of our lives, even entertainment and recreation, is complicated by an ever-widening array of choices delivered at a frantic pace. Consider:
And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
More than 800,000 apps in the Apple App Store, 240-plus selections on the Cheesecake Factory menu, 437 lotions and 1,992 fragrances at Sephora.com. In 1980, the typical credit card contract was about 400 words long. Today, many are 20,000 words.
But one company has worked hard to counter this complexity trend—the supermarket chain Trader Joe's. Trader Joe's figured out that trying to give people everything is a lousy business model: It overwhelms customers, clutters stores, and undermines the shopping experience. So Trader Joe's offers many fewer products than other supermarkets (about 4,000 items instead of 40,000). But limiting variety doesn't mean bland selections. The company offers customers the best choices possible. Thus, shoppers don't have to sort through dozens of options for jam or mustard or frozen foods.
Does it work? The chain, which has about 350 stores in the U.S., sells an estimated $1,750 in merchandise per square foot, more than double the sales generated per square foot by Whole Foods Corporation.
Matt. 22:37-39
“Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Live everyday with God-given power.
Live everyday with God-given power.
Power to work
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”
And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.”
Power to live
But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
Power for hard times
Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God,
I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.
Take out cell phone: I wonder why my cell phone won’t work? I charged it last month.
Live everyday with God-given promise.
Live everyday with God-given promise.
And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
When you live everyday for Christ you live with the promise that you are growing and getting better and better each day.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
1 Pet
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
When you live everyday for Christ you live with the promise that God will take the good and bad and use it all to accomplish His purpose for you.
Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. You are serving the Lord Christ.
Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.
When you live everyday for Christ you live with the promise that you are making an eternal difference and will be well rewarded. You aren’t just laboring for causes and things that will one day be gone.
Forty-three states, along with the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands, run lotteries [as of January 2014] …. According to a CNN article, "More than half of us have played the lottery in the last year." In 2012, Americans spent around $78 billion playing lotteries.
What drives the popularity of lotteries? Not the ridiculous odds. You're more likely to be attacked by a shark (one in 11.5 million) or die in a lightning strike (one in three million) than you are to win Powerball's grand prize (one in over 175 million). You'd have to buy 86 million tickets to reach even a fifty-fifty chance of winning.
Big Idea: Living everyday for Jesus makes everyday better.
Big Idea: Living everyday for Jesus makes everyday better.
So why do we people keep playing the lottery? Maybe because it lets us live in a fantasy world. As Rebecca Paul Hargrove, president of the Tennessee Education Lottery Corporation, puts it, "For $2 you can spend the day dreaming about what you would do with half a billion dollars—half a billion dollars!" Psychologist Dr. Stephen Goldbart suggests the lottery appeals because "it lets you believe in magic: that you will be the one who spent a little and got a lot" and that the money "will give you a respite from the conflict, complexity, and angst of everyday life." Journalist Adam Piore writes, "[The lottery] is a game where reason and logic are rendered obsolete, and hope and dreams are on sale."
You came to church today. I’m really glad. But you can’t put $2 worth of effort into your relationship with Christ and expect to get a half-billion dollars worth of return. It’s an empty hope, an impossible dream. But when you live everyday for Jesus, you live everyday with promise. You’re not hoping against hope. You’re not chasing an impossible dream.
Big Idea: Living everyday for Jesus makes everyday better.
Big Idea: Living everyday for Jesus makes everyday better.
Four-year old with broken truck.