Go on a Rich Diet!!

How many diet and exercise plans have you been on??

As you know I compete in both triathlons and hockey and while I love both sports, there is a very significant difference for me. In hockey, I can always go to the bench after the end of a shift but in a triathlon the only shift you get is switching gears! No one else can take your place. There is no DH, no bullpen, you can’t just say pass. It’s all you every step of the journey.

It is the same thing with our lives, every time we have a decision to make, we get a turn. The more conscious we become of the significance of those decisions, the more we will embrace those choices. The question is this: “ In the light of eternity what difference will this make?”

What thoughts will I dwell on...man, can I get in a funk when the self defeating thoughts are allowed to roam freely. Who will the people be that dominate my conversations? How will I direct my desires? How will I take care of my body? Will I allow myself to be interrupted? All these things when I add them up make up my life and determine its course. No one else can play my part.

One of the champions of choosing well, getting his whole diet figured out and being incredibly wise is Daniel. Here in his story we find a man who was definitely in a place that was way out of his control. His land was conquered by King Nebuchadnezzar and he was an unwelcome foreigner in a new country. He lost everything he knew from his family to his culture, his status and his name. Did he still have choices to make? Absolutely and he took every opportunity to exercise them. Get ready for today’s spiritual workout!

The name Daniel means ‘the Lord will judge’. He had nobility in Israel, he had nothing in Babylon. This nation and its leaders decided to cart off the most sacred objects from Israel including its students who had the highest potential and enter them into their leadership training. He was now known as Belteshazzar and where we may have gone fighting tooth and nail, we find Daniel shifting his energy in other ways.


In the Bible, Babylon represents everything there is about excess when it comes to luxuries.
The merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries. Revelation 18:3
It was a city that was materialistic and was intoxicating in every way.
The inhabitants of the earth were intoxicated with the wine of her adulteries. Revelation 17:2
It was a place where your view of reality could all too easily become distorted where your god becomes whatever feels right for you...forget about the naked truth of consequences.
Daniel walks into all of this and -

Resolve before God that no one else will live my life for me v1-10

It was certainly quite the science project. Take the cream of the crop of the nation that you have crushed and completely immerse them in your culture, your beliefs and train them to be in your service...but what do you do with young men who clearly have a different way of going about their lives?

For Daniel it was obvious and the matter was clear. Am I going to go mainstream and become soft. Everything about a steady diet of rich food and wine spoke of excess to Daniel. This was not the plan that he grew up on and He wasn’t about to change his steady diet of being rich toward God. He had resolve and the decision was not to defile himself in this way. In his day, he would have been bound as well by many of the ceremonial laws that surrounded food as well which are not the case for us today.

God has given us a tiny measure of what He has in limitless supply and that is our decision making ability. When I sign up for a triathlon on the Subaru website and pay the registration fee there is a point of no return. You resolve that you will run the race (Hebrews 12:1,2)and you begin training.


In the Christian life, we are not in a sprint, we are in this for the long haul and we need to stay true to the convictions that God has given us.

I love the verses in 1 Corinthians 3:4-7 for those of us who actively resolving to run the race:
After you, insert your name into these verses and be empowered by the truth of His Word spoken over you.


I always thank God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. 5For in him you have been enriched in every way—in all your speaking and in all your knowledge— 6because our testimony about Christ was confirmed in you. 7Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. 8He will keep you strong to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9God, who has called you into fellowship with his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful.

So Daniel makes the decision and resolves to not defile himself in this way.


Did you know the greatest difference in concentration camps between people who give up and those who remain resilient is the sense that they still have control over something however little that is. The same is true of nursing homes and for those seniors who still making the decision as to how their room is set up to deciding their entertainment. Daniel knew he still had choices in his environment and he exercised them for the glory of God.

Let’s also remember that taking this very decision involved great risk for Daniel. One should tread very lightly with a man like King Nebuchadnezzar in charge. When Zedekiah as a propped up ruler rebelled against him, the king had his sons killed before his eyes and then had his eyes cut out.

Choose to detoxify and simplify and watch God work v11-16


The chief official is obviously reluctant with Daniel’s request, but God is already working in the official’s heart to cause him to admire his request. We read that God causes favour and sympathy to be shown to him.

When has God chosen to show you favour in the eyes of others?
Did anything precede that on your part? Often, we have to put ourselves out there so to speak in a place of vulnerability, a place of risk where we tell God, OK, ‘I am 100% trusting you on this initiative’.

However with regards to the request there is a very big ‘IF’!!

He doesn’t want his head to be on the platter if this experiment goes bad so they come to a happy compromise.

The test experiment will last 10 days and Daniel, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah will only eat vegetables and drink water.

For these four men this was certainly the first of many opportunities for God to shine brightly through their lives. The call to live simply was purely on a physical level but it would be naive for us to think that this was only about being vegetarians.

At the very heart of this test was to set these men apart from all the rest of the king’s servants. The fact that they made this decision meant that all the eyes of the others were strictly on them. They weren’t interested in blending in, they were prepared to stand out and as we read further in this book, more and more areas of their lives were going to surface and shine from their prayer lives to their unstoppable faith in God and God alone.

Speaking of going mainstream and being soft, we live in a culture of consumerism and excess. It is so easy for us to just blend in to the culture around us and not stand out. Our spending patterns, our entertainment choices, our success rate at marriage...there is unfortunately very little that separates us.

Now while I’m not calling for us to move down the road and set up shop with the Amish in St. Jacobs, when is the last time we made a decision to simplify so that we could hear the voice of God more clearly in our lives and allow Him to shine more brightly?

We have learned that God has forgiven us and redeemed us but we easily become lazy at knowing the facts and not living out the truth in its transforming work in our lives. We know that we don’t need the spiritual disciplines in order to go to heaven so we don’t bother with them and we know that God knows all our needs so we skip out on the exercise of prayer and this is when we lose out.

Daniel didn’t want to lose out so he went on a diet plan for God!

Don’t worry I’m not going to ask you to go on a diet of rice and beans just yet, but let’s take an honest look at our lives and where are we becoming soft?

• sleeping in vs resting in God

• listening to the opinions of talk shows vs hearing from God

• television shows vs watching God show up in our lives.


I watched a couple of great shows this week. One show was actually a ride home with Shawn Cayer as he shared about how his daughter Rachel is beginning to pray.

Another show was the baptism of Jay and Fred at the Gord and Anne’s home on Thursday night.

When we get consumed by all that this world has to offer we all too easily lose our footing, our minds can become fuzzy.

If we allow the world to steal our hearts, we have all but lost the battle. Gary Thomas

Let me say this also...

Even when it comes to pursuing our faith, that very same mentality easily crosses over. We can easily become soft when we only feed off what others say about God. We consume services, Bible studies, events and Christian books all with a desire to fill our appetites. All too easily we just let other people keeping feeding us instead of learning to feed ourselves.

When did it change at church? Most people come to church with their napkin tucked into their shirt and ready to eat and forget to take it out when they leave! Where else is the napkin supposed to go? It was meant to go over our arm as a server.

Gary Thomas writes in The Beautiful Fight,

The great use of the church is to help men and women to do without it...Church services are diets of worship. They are meals. All who are hungry will take them, and if wise, regularly. But no worker is paid for his meals. He is paid for the work he does in the strength of them.
And here is when the napkin comes out...

Service reminds us that Christianity isn’t about keeping our faith as much as it is about spreading our faith. Get your servant towels out; church meetings don’t define us. What defines us is what we do with it out there!

And that is what defines Southside and that is what defines each and every one of us. They already know we go here for the most part but the verdict is still out on whether it is worth it for them.


Let the results of your life with God speak for themself v17-21

God blessed these four men with heightened spiritual sensitivity

Because they chose to go without, they were blessed with:

Knowledge – incredible insights – God wants to bless you with fresh revelations into His Word
Understanding of all kinds of literature – They had a wealth of understanding that went into all areas of life and learning – they had incredibly sharp minds

Understanding of visions and dreams – They were blessed with prophetic insight and were enabled by God to speak into the lives of others and especially to the leaders in the nation
10X better when it came to wisdom compared to those with earthly wisdom....hands down, make no mistake about it, they stood head and shoulders above all the rest. When they stood up for their faith and beliefs, others recognized it.

I was sharing stories with my pastor friend Dan Barber about how our kids were doing in school. Dan’s daughter is just starting HS this year and is now in a new circle of friends. One day she was caught off guard because one of her friends referred to her as ‘holy’ in a good way. It wasn’t because she carried a large Bible to school or a cross necklace that she was wearing. The other girls noticed the way that she talked about others and herself, what it was filled with and what it was free of.

The Champion ran an article about our family on Friday and we were able to share about the joy of simplicity and the freedom from stuff that we felt in Mexico.

I began this morning by talking about the decisions that we make and the question, ‘In the light of eternity what difference does this make?’

The fact is that temporal pleasures will always crowd out eternal ones. We are told to resist the urge to fulfill our appetite with cheap substitutes for the same reason our parents told us not to eat cookies before supper. If we are truly going to be satisfied spiritually we need to learn the patience that comes in waiting and getting hungry for God to reveal Himself and show up in our lives instead of running for ‘sin substitutes’.

Name a sin and you can always find its ‘holy’ opposite. Examples are learning to give instead of stealing, encouraging others instead of gossiping about them, sacrificial love for others instead of lust, reaching out to others in need instead of self absorption

The Takeaway....

One of the best things we can do is become conscious of making decisions. So set apart ten days, decide to go on a Daniel adventure and for 10 days choose to honor God in that area.

Maybe like Daniel it will involve what you eat or what you choose to feed your mind.

Decide to go 10 days without complaining about anything!

Read the whole book of Daniel in 10 days

Cut out the sheets that state ‘temporary’ and ‘eternal’ and paste them where they appropriately go for 10 days. For example: place ‘temporary’ on your fridge, your tv, your wallet,...everything in there goes real fast but put eternal on your bball hoop if you play with someone else, put eternal on the chair where you meet with God or by the night table by your bed if that is where you pray. Put eternal on your BBQ if you have friends over and talk about your spiritual life over the meal.



I saw a guy in Subway the other day with a UPC symbol tattooed on the back of his neck complete with his birthdate in numbers under the line and it reminded me that one day our lives will be scanned and it is my prayer that it will be found rich with great decisions that honoured God!

Service is our soul salsa....Ministry opportunity guide

Being Rich Toward God!

I want to talk to today about getting rich!

Check out this youtube video...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38mCxz7HLLo

How many of us have bought into a get rich scheme at one point or another....In our younger more foolish days before Sharon and I were married we tried our hand in selling NSA ‘bacteriaostatic’ water treatment units.

Some Chinese believe if anybody were to unconsciously wear their clothes inside out then they would be very lucky on that day. But the act must not be done intentionally. Well today we are beginning a new series on living life intentionally inside out! Yes, my clothes are inside out to reverse our thinking on a lot of so called Christian behaviour. The first line of thinking to be challenged is the whole area of what it means to be rich.

Now, being in a church that promotes getting rich is certainly not a new thing. I have been there where there are prayers for unexpected cheques in the mail, more bonuses, surprises, windfalls, you name it in the name of Jesus and it will be done to you. However, I want to promote an inside out focus here and speak about the richness that God offers us which is even better.

Being Rich without God makes us lukewarm. Revelation 3:14-20

In Revelation 3:14-20 the posture for receiving blessing is revealed.

¹⁷You say, 'I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.'

That is US!

Time magazine actually ran an article in ’06, ‘Does God want you to be rich’...well...

How rich do you think you are? Its like Scotiabank...you’re richer than you think!

We make 100x more the amount of money that ½ the world makes in a day. Most of the rest of the world makes about $2-day. The rest of the world looks at us and thinks wow, they are stinking rich. Being rich puts us at such a disadvantage spiritually. Jesus was quoted in the gospels talking about just how difficult it is for us to enter the kingdom of heaven. The toughest people to reach are the rich and the more money we have, the easier it is for us really not to rely on God....I don’t need a thing.

You have heard it said ‘money does weird things to people,’ but have you ever heard someone say, ‘money has done weird things to me?’

The church in Canada has a problem and we are lukewarm and as one pastor states, lukewarm and loving it.

¹⁵I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! ¹⁶So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.

God wants to spit you out of his mouth – Now, let’s look at the Greek word for spit...huck! Being lukewarm is repulsive to God.

He is saying to us, you make me gag when you compare me to your stuff, your idols, your security

I too get easily sucked into all of this, the comfortable life. If I can’t pull it off here, I will leave. If I can’t be an example of keeping me eyes on the real prize, I’m going to have to get off this bus.

The fact is that Halton has been declared the safest place to live in Canada. Did you ever think how dangerous that is for our faith?

How many of us have had to pray, ‘give us this day our daily bread and really needed to pray that as if our life depended on it. We really just don’t get that needy.

But what does the verse say.... you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.

wretched – a deplorable state of misfortune, prisoners huddling in cold, dark prisons.

We need to get to the place of an honest admission.

We are poor –

We are blind-

We are naked – how vulnerable are we really?

When you get to the place where you honestly tell God, ‘I’ve got nothing’. ‘I’m not feeling it’. These are not pretty metaphors to be throwing around.

I know what you are thinking. You look at people on your street and it looks pretty good. They walk their dogs and hopefully keep them on their leash, they take their kids to minor soccer, they have a nice home, they look like they are doing pretty good without God. Plain and simple that is what wealth does to them and it does the same to us. It gives you that attitude...’I do not need a thing’ and it is a false sense of security. All you need to do is just ask someone who has lost their job or someone whose spouse walked out on them.

¹⁸I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see. ¹⁹Those whom I love I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest, and repent. ²⁰Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.

Jesus is telling us that what he has for us is so much greater than anything we could ever find out there in stuff for our houses, our closets. God own the real ‘Future Shop’ and it is worth the wait. I know there are Christian books telling you that you can have your best life now, but ultimately our best life will be later...Matthew 6:19-21.

Francis Chan speaks on this very theme in ‘Crazy Love’ and challenges us with 3 simple questions in his message.

If you are lukewarm, here are 3 things to ask God alone or with honesty in your small groups. I will never forget how powerful a night of sharing in Mexico was when we debriefed with a team from New Jersey when one girl just honestly admitted to all of us, “I am lukewarm.”

1. Show me where I’m lukewarm?

2. Give me strength in the areas that I am weak

3. God do whatever it takes to get me on fire for you.

He goes on to say, if that means taking all my money away, then take it away. If that means taking all my security away, then take it away. If that means taking all my loved ones away

...or moving me away from them, then do what it takes.

WHY? Because you God rebuke and discipline us those who you love, don’t let us leave lukewarm.

OK, so what’s in store when we go there?

Being rich toward God is found in a place of desperation. Gen 27:28

Jacob is a great example of someone who got it all wrong and got it all right almost at the same time.

In this story of we find Jacob disguising himself as Esau so as to win the favour of His Father. The culture of covenantal blessing in the family was passed down through the firstborn son yet Jacob was not content for leftovers. He knew how rich the family blessing was and deceived his father in the process. You might be able to fool others and maybe even yourself in to believing you are rich toward God. We can say all the right things, make other people notice, but we can’t twist the arm of God. He will bring the blessing when we are ready to receive it. Did Jacob receive the covenantal blessing? Yes. Did he take an unorthodox route to position himself for it. You bet he did. He wrestled with the angel of the Lord all night to know the Lord’s touch. The deceiver had to learn the consequences of being deceived at the hands of his Uncle Laban and put his only family on hold for 14 years.

Being rich toward God is letting go of other’s IOUs Deuteronomy 15:4

However, there should be no poor among you, for in the land the LORD your God is giving you to possess as your inheritance, he will richly bless you,

In v3 we are called to cancel debts

In God’s economy, there is an expectation of kindness and justice...

Micah 6:8 He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

There is a mandate for all of us because we all have been richly blessed and that is to learn to hold it with open hands. We get to the point where we open the cheque book and ask God, ‘how much?’

Being rich is all about where you store it! Matthew 6:19-21

Do you think you would ever get to the place of cheque writing except this time you will be the one writing them and asking God, ‘How much’?

Does that sound crazy? Have I got your attention?

What does He want to store up in us.

Kindness - Romans 2:4 kindness leads us to repentance

Redemption - Ephesians 1:7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God's grace; 2:4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy,

Wisdom - Romans 11:33 Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!

Generosity - 2 Corinthians 9:11 You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.

Psalm 34:8 How do you taste God? Can you recall a rich experience with him and what did it look like for you?

Look at how David identifies himself in Psalm 34.

I sought the LORD, and he answered me;
he delivered me from all my fears.

⁵ Those who look to him are radiant;
their faces are never covered with shame.

⁶ This poor man called, and the LORD heard him;
he saved him out of all his troubles.

(Before we can taste and see the Lord is good we have to realize just how poor we are. )

⁷ The angel of the LORD encamps around those who fear him,
and he delivers them.

⁸ Taste and see that the LORD is good;
blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.

⁹ Fear the LORD, you his saints,
for those who fear him lack nothing.

1 Timothy 6:17 Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.

James 2:5 Listen, my dear brothers: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him?

I want to finish by turning that opening video on being rich inside out.

Make the decision to become rich. (toward God)

Close your eyes and visualize (pray) the lifestyle you want to lead...you will start seeing thing in your environment that you have not seen before. (that is what we call the HS leading)

Studying how to get rich (toward God)

Find people who are already rich (toward God) and get into their sphere of influence.

Timing Is Everything

Do you have good timing or bad timing? Often when we reflect on triumph or tragedy, we easily can find ourselves saying well he or she was in the right place at the right time or on the flipside, wrong place, wrong time!

Timing is everything especially if you believe in divine providence.

Ecclesiastes 3 The title Ecclesiastes simply means the ‘preacher’ and we are presented with a very transparent sermon, the story of a long journey of faith found and almost lost yet one who is ready to entrust his thoughts to God.

We move from the pure wisdom of Solomon in Proverbs to a more edgier, crustier view on life coming from a older man who has seen it all. At one point you read his thoughts, ‘He has set eternity in the hearts of men’ and you say ‘right on’! Then you read, ‘Man’s fate is like that of the animals...man has no advantage over the animal’ and you are left scratching your head wondering if he has lost his.

In Ecclesiastes we have his honest reflections and it is schizophrenic at best. He does come around at the very end but not before taking us on a real journey of fate and faith. He contrasts the hopelessness of life under the sun with no thought of God as opposed to life with eternity in full view and recognizes the one thing that is true of all of us and that is we are all accountable to God. We will discover how to keep faith filled and fate free and how it has everything to do with timing!

I’m going to challenge you on some ‘time based’ questions...

Are you able to see the beauty in God’s timing? v1-8


We may have the best laid plans and then life happens doesn’t it?


You can have everything all set up to, the plan in motion and then something will happen that will change everything. Ecclesiastes 3 tells us that there are different times in our lives, different seasons. It tells us there are times to love, celebrate, plant, heal, dance and mend. But there are also times to hate, die, mourn, weep, tear down and even (though it doesn’t say it in these words) dare I say, be sick.

Why are there times to be sick? What does sickness do to us? It forces us to slow down, to pause, to reorient our lives, to know healing! It is often is sickness and pain that we can hear God the best. C.S. Lewis wrote, ‘God whispers to us in our joy but shouts in our pain’

Do you have a good sense of timing?

A good sense of timing teaches us that we don’t set the timers.
God is in complete control.

A good sense of timing teaches me that it doesn’t all come at once. There are different seasons in my life. It exposes the false teaching of ’ prosperity gospel’. I’m not meant to have it all now and hopefully I will realize just how much I already have.

It is recognizing that the gospel is more about who I am receiving than what I’m getting out of this deal.

A good sense of timing is the juxtaposition of absolute opposites.
Can you see God in both places, can you accept God in both places, can you love God in both places? It is not easy to harmonize all the experiences mentioned here.

There are some experiences that many people wish they didn’t have to experience like going through weeping and mourning, the reality of war

There are times when we get stuck, we go so deep into the experience of death that we lose sight of birth, or we get so wrapped up in planting, being rooted that we forget that we are also meant to uproot.

There is something to be said about developing roots, but there is something really powerful about those who don’t stay too long in one place. They teach us not to get too attached to what we have because these possessions easily can possess us.


We can only see a fraction of the movement of time. Is this tyranny or a beautiful rhythm of life
The cycle of life... life is not static, it doesn’t stand still....Oh if we could only have
Ultimately these first 8 verses teach us that we are really not in control.

A time to refrain...when the father of the bride looks at you with you getting too affectionate
Did you ever think that you would be like this?

On our own we will always feel that there is something.
God appoints the times and the seasons. He knows when we are ready
He finishes his focus on times with a time to love and a time to hate.
What are we called to hate?
The consequences of sin....get a little righteous indignation in you!



Do you live with God’s perspective on your day to day time? v9-17

V9 presents us with a foundational question – what is the point of work anyways? He talks about the burden laid on us from the work that we perform.

The fact is as believers we are told to travel light. Burdens pile up on us when we only have the short view of our toil in mind...pay the bills, buy the groceries, keep filling up the tank with gas, keep getting stuck in traffic,

There is a place of redefinition, a place where we see recognize that ‘this too shall end’. It will enable us to fully embrace where we are now, where God is taking us and where we ultimately will be.

Redefinition allows us to find the meaning in every and all situations. When we do this, it will give us strength and meaning in the difficult places as well as the joy filled times.

There is a place where God seems distant, where problems seem overwhelming, where questions seem abundant, where faith is difficult.it is the dark night of the soul but God is there. It is a place where faith can prosper, where beauty comes from the ashes and where faith comes through the fire and turns to gold.

What are you looking for from God?

What are you hoping to discover about yourself?

Do you find satisfaction is what you are doing?

It is all a gift from God - the ability to enjoy what we do, the wisdom to gain perspective, to realize my life is completely in His hands, to know that this too shall end.

v10 We have been created with the knowledge of God Romans 1:19 People can repress the knowledge of God but it doesn’t deny that it is ultimately deep within us at our very core.

Speaking of things being made beautiful in their time...I have learned a few things in my travels and from believers in different cultures and countries.

In Nigeria Jerry has confirmed that relationships take precedence over time. If someone stops in and interrupts you, they will stop whatever they are doing and entertain the guest for the appropriate amount of time according to the relationship. If that makes you late for another engagement that is ok because it takes precedence. You can pretty much arrive whenever you get there and everybody is happy to see you; however, you never leave early from a public function because that is a sign of rudeness.

In Mexico, it is also not about the time that you arrive, but more importantly that you truly enter in when you are there and that you experience the fellowship... It not about the timing of the music, you just clap whenever you feel led. Services never started on time and no one is looking at their watches and wondering when the pastor is bringing the plane in for a landing.

Eternity is a long time to wrap your mind around, that is why God didn’t place it in our heads, he wants to settle it in our hearts!

We will all be held accountable.

Do you recognize when you lose your sense of balance? v18-22

When we lose our balance we lose our sense of timing.

I played on Wii fit for the first time this weekend and one of the first things you have to do is tell Wii a little bit about yourself, your age, your height. It then weighs you in and lets you know your body mass index. The last test you have to complete is a test of balance on one leg and it measures how close to the center you are holding. The better you do on this test, the better you come out on your Wii age, my Wii age is 33!

We lose our balance spiritually speaking when we lose sight of eternity. We become cynical, we get lost in the monotony of the routine. We become short sighted and we lose so much, we age spiritually but not in a good way. We age in the sense that we have nothing to offer in this life.

Fatalism is the creed of a will that is dying to its possibilities and seeks to drag the imagination with it. Resignation to life as a ‘so it is’ carved in stone is the cynical response of the one who does not know the grand triumph of the imagination that God has fashioned for us.
Ravi Zacharias in Recapture The Wonder

We lose hope, we become pessimistic and we are definitely not fun to be around.
Have you been around those kind of people?

How do we keep from becoming one of those kind of people?
We stand in awe!

It is deep within our heart that there is a longing to retain the wonder, to believe that there is someone or something will explain what our soul wants to confirm. We need heaven to invade our hearts

George Matheson was a man who wrote a glorious hymn while in the midst of a very bitter disappointing time in his life. He dearly loved a woman who he longed to marry. As their romance grew, he knew he had to tell her about his condition. She needed to know that he was growing blind and so before things went any further, he told her. To his complete surprise, she broke off the relationship and while he felt something inside him die during that time, he wrote this hymn.
O love that will not let me go, I rest my weary soul in thee; I give thee back the life I owe, that in thine ocean depths its flow may richer, fuller, be.
O joy that seeketh me through pain, I cannot close my heart to thee; I trace the rainbow through the rain, and feel the promise is not in vain, that morn shall tearless be.
He said, ‘I had the impression of having it dictated to me by some inward voice, rather than working it out myself.’
Through his incredible loss, somehow he learned to live confidently in his conviction about the love of God and that He would never reject him.
Somehow the wonder of God’s love must be captured and be brought close to the heart.
However not only that, but we must learn the true cost of that love because wonder is also found there.
Only a commitment lived out truly explores wonder and is invaded by love.
Love is greater than any law and it is love for God and His ways that floods our souls and His timing is always perfect. We will never understand this to the full extent until we are perfected through eternity.
There is more to life than just enjoying your work
For who can bring him to see what will happen after him? v22
God is fully capable of giving us fresh glimpses of what we are leaving behind or the trail we are creating for our children.
Ephesians 5:15 make the most of every opportunity
Redeem the time you have, don’t keep reliving the way things used to be and don’t always be so forward looking, that you are always ‘hoping to live’. Treasure the relationships, experiences and places that God brings your way.

To see all of time in the light of eternity, to see every moment and every opportunity as a chance to glorify God, to receive life and experiences for what they are, and most of all, to be present. That is to be present to others in love, service and availability; to be present in what I am expected to do, with diligence, care, and integrity; to be present when needed, as my workplace, friends, or community need me.
Stuart McAllister