How Shall We Then Live?...

"And be not conformed to this world; but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God" (Romans 12:2, KJV). 
Francis Schaeffer wrote a book by this title too, showing its importance.  The question we all must answer:  "How shall we live in light of eternity?"  Jesus didn't tell us to close shop and stop working to wait till He comes but Matthew Henry said that we should live each day as if it's our last!  Jesus told us to occupy till [He] comes and be ready!  But we are to be ready and watch for Christ's coming and live our life to have maximum impact on eternity. We aren't seeking to be remembered but to be obedient. 

We see eternal results in everything; all we do strikes a chord that will vibrate for eternity.  Everything will either be rewarded or not, and in time we can be disciplined for what we do if not in God's will.   Paul said that to him "to die is gain" not as a death wish but he meant that he saw eternity in a better light than imagined ("what no human mind has conceived"). He only said this because he had a clear concept of heaven with no misconceptions or delusions to live the good life.

Living in light of eternity inspires us to do good deeds and to have a good testimony to the world at large so they get saved as a result.  It helps us in our trials, seeing that they are only temporal and serve an eternal purpose.  In short, we become purpose-driven.  We prove and validate our faith by our deeds--the faith we have is the faith we show and authenticate.   The more we see Jesus coming soon, the more eager we will be to show our faith also because we will see the urgency of the Great Commission relative to our personal lives. We will want to pass it on and become contagious Christians.  We will be eager to make others ready and to stop living for the moment and the here and now.  What we look forward to affects our worldview and how we interpret life in general.  When the "Desire of all nations" (cf. Haggai 2:7) comes at His Parousia, we will be transformed to become like Him, but we can have a taste of the good things to come now:  "Taste and see that the LORD is good." But now we can see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living (cf. Psalm 27:13, KJV).

We are simply pilgrims, aliens, foreigners, and even strangers in this life and to the world, and passing through, not meant to make ourselves at home here--we don't belong here!  But God has a place for us in His plan. God has an eternal purpose for our lives that He will fulfill and not give up on us.  We are on a spiritual journey too, growing in our relationship with Christ--Reality 101.  We should not cling to our mundane lives but see that our spiritual lives take precedence; however, we do not live with our heads in the clouds nor on cloud nine.  What matters is how our relationship with Christ is growing.  It is wrong to think that we should live as if we go around once and should grab all the gusto we can.  We must have an eternal bucket list that involves our beatific vision of God in glory.

Having a true focus on Christ, keeping our eyes on Jesus orients our life and sets the priorities to have spiritual value.   However, we ought not to be so heavenly minded we are no earthly good. We must not be known as mere secluded saints but actively involved in the real world.  We can enjoy this life, but without sin, and thank God for the blessings that it gives to all in common grace. We can enjoy life to the max as Jesus promised:  "I am come that they may have life, and have it to the full [more abundant life]" (John 10:10, NIV).  On the other hand, we ought not to "love the world nor the things of the world" because the more we do, the less room we'll have in our hearts to satisfy our spiritual appetites to enjoy all the good things He gives us richly as blessing for stewardship (cf 1 Tim. 6:17).

The good life has universally been defined as an ethical one: our duty to God and mankind.  We do this by loving God with all our hearts and our neighbor as ourselves as exemplified in the parable of the Good Samaritan.  "Mankind, He has told you what is good and what it is the LORD requires of you:  to act justly, to love faithfulness, and to walk humbly with your God" (Micah 6:8, HCSB).  This is achieved by a true sense of "oughtness."  Knowing and believing right doctrine or having one's thinking straightened out is orthodoxy while living right and practicing what one believes and applying it is orthopraxy--both are necessary for the good life (which is not achieving the American dream!).

In the final analysis, when our lives are given their final audit and we go one-on-one with our Maker to face God in the Bema or Judgment Seat, we must ask ourselves whether we are faithful stewards to the blessings God has given us and whether we used them to have an impact. We all will pass on some legacy and people will tend to judge our lives, but what matters most is what Christ sees in us. He isn't going to ask us about our achievements but our obedience and we will realize that success doesn't matter to God because it belongs to Him anyway (cf. Deut. 8:18), but what matters is our call to faithfulness.   Praise the Lord, life is good!    Soli Deo Gloria!

How To Live The Good Life...

"If I want to know how to live in reality, I must know what God is really like." --Plato

Most people have dreams and fantasies, maybe even a bucket list of things to do in life in order to feel fulfilled or complete.  How about a bucket list of doing God's will?  Achieving the American dream isn't the answer to life; you can have everything to live on and nothing to live for!  The problem has never been dreams or wishes but in how to achieve them; most people end their lives in frustration have never "found themselves" or what God's will was for them.  We must be purpose-driven to have an impact and focused on our goals with a chord that will vibrate for eternity.

Not just to be remembered, but to be a game-changer.  According to the Bible, God has an intricate purpose and individual tailor-made plan for each of us, and if we are in God's will, walking by faith, we will find it to be the safest and most blessed place to be found.  We are hard-wired to work in our calling and to worship God.  He is interested in our whole being (heart, mind, body, soul, spirit) and its holistic health, not an unbalanced life that isn't worthy of our walk and has no testimony. 

Even Christians can have a secular worldview and not think biblically.  The goal in life is not just to be a goody-goody or to seek pleasure (you only go around once, grab all the gusto you can!), because God isn't primarily concerned with our "happiness," (which depends on happenings), but with us glorifying and enjoying Him.  There are intrinsic rewards and incentives in finding wisdom, which is more precious than rubies (cf. Prov. 8:11).   The result of the moral life is one of confidence and a good reputation, which is more valuable than riches too.

We all ought to seek a life beyond reproach so that the infidel has nothing evil to say about us (cf. Eph. 4:1).  One blockage to good thinking is not to have a Christian worldview; we all need to get our thinking straightened out and learn to think clearly, which will result in sound discourse and dialogue.  When we do find fulfillment and joy in life we become contagious and it shows.  Many people claim inner joy but haven't told their faces!

Plato thought of three inputs to our will, which control our ways:  desire, emotion, and knowledge.  We must make sure that we seek truth and feed on knowledge, wisdom, and understanding and even have a thirst for the Word, and we must have worthy ambitions and desires in life, and also the fulfilled person has his emotions in check.  But most people just are about as lazy as they dare to be and take the path of least resistance--the easy way out!

We must not ever pray for an easy life, but for God to increase our faith and strength. Remember, all a man's ways seem right to him, but the Lord weighs the heart (cf. Prov. 16:2).   The study of ethics is about living the good life and we find it by practicing our ethics (putting our creed into action) and believing in miracles from God.   What we do is expect great things from God, but we must attempt them too, as William Carey would say.  Aim high, then!

God is the moral center of the universe and we all must have a moral compass and show moral fiber, for character counts!   But there is a danger to reducing Christianity to a system of ethics, a rule book, a catalog of rules, or a list of dos and don'ts.   We must never lose focus but keep looking onto Jesus and cultivate that personal relationship with Him.  Our ethic shows our character and the faith we have is the faith we show: we demonstrate, validate, and authenticate our faith by turning it into deeds, otherwise it's suspect and spurious, even bogus and hypocritical. Turning our knowledge into action is faith, demonstrated in obedience.   But avoiding sin and immorality is not all there is to Christian ethics; its summation is to follow Christ in full renewing, ongoing surrender.  We must not only cease to do evil, but do good!

Upon following Christ, now we don't go by feelings, but when doing the will of God, we'll have a peace that passes all understanding.  The person who really knows Christ knows how to live and live in reality.  Knowing truth is a matter of repentance and of being oriented to reality--only God can set us free form delusion (cf 2 Tim. 2:25).   Life in Christ isn't always a religious high or on cloud nine, but varies with the task, for God always fills us and anoints us for His work.   We must know and learn the real formula for feeling good:  know right, think right, do right, and finally, to feel right.  Doing the right thing should make one feel right.

God is good, but being good without God is evil and a parody of the real thing.  Now, I must conclude with the standard Jesus set (the Golden Rule):  the highest ethic of all and the highest incentive to do it.  We will never be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect--that's the standard, but the direction we go is the test!  Remember, God has great expectations for us and wants us to attempt to move mountains with our mustard-seed faith!   We all have unrealized potential and should actualize the innate worth we possess, not to let it be dormant and thus waste our lives.   Soli Deo Gloria!

An Incentive To Live The Good Life

"The heart has reasons the mind knows not of."  --Blaise Pascal
[No nation has been able to maintain] "a moral life without the aid of religion."   --Will Durant, humanist and historian.  
"God must exist for ethics to be possible."  --Immanuel Kant
"If God does not exist, all things are permissible."  --Fydor Dostoevsky
"For the entire law is fulfilled in keeping this one command:  'Love your neighbor as yourself'"  (Gal. 5:14, NIV).  
"...The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love"  (Gal. 5:6, NIV, emphasis mine).  
DEFINITIONS:  RELIGION IS KNOWLEDGE OF A CREED; CHRISTIANITY KNOWLEDGE OF A PERSON

Some philosophers reduce moral living to living the good life (however they define it!), but this is impossible without getting one's thinking straightened out and beginning to think clearly to do it.  The path to enlightenment is not an easy one (Jesus said the truth would set us free) and once we've found it we want to share as contagious believers--you'll want to pass it on!  Our goal in life must not be our own happiness, but to unselfishly seek the happiness of others and to glorify God. The goal is spiritual and moral goodness which will have fruit, not to be on a blind pursuit of happiness which can have no anchor or moral compass but have the problem of excess or abuse.   Man always seems to do what is right in his own eyes,  but the Lord sees the heart and considers motive. (Cf. Prov. 16:2; cf. 21:2)  Happiness can be seen as the fruit of moral and right living as the byproduct not aim.   We all ought to live beyond reproach in order to have maximum influence and impact with our lives--to make a difference!

Ethics, then, is about the good life.  But goodness without God is evil because it's a sham.  Many have pondered, "How shall we then live?"  I'm not just talking about being a goody-goody or do-gooder but living a fulfilling life that counts.  If you just want to be a good person, any religion will do! Everyone has a religion or faith, and to some, they reduce Christianity to a code of conduct or ethics or make it simplistic like "My religion is the Golden Rule." We must not reduce Christianity to the universal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of man--it's simply knowing God and then making Him known, which brings Him glory and will be rewarded.  According to John Stott, Christianity is Christ, all else is peripheral or circumference.   But the valued spiritual life is about a relationship, salvation being the restoration of it, not just studying Him academically.   We don't study or read the Bible to increase our knowledge but to change our lives.

We soon discover that there's a moral center to the universe--God!   And that without Him life makes no sense!  Without God in the picture there's no basis of absolute right and wrong and character doesn't count--it's all relative.  But we all are convicted of the moral and divine order of the universe; that's why we see justice, love, fair play, courage, integrity, etc.).  But we all have the same weakness as far as morals go:  we tend to justify ourselves and hope we don't get caught or no one will know our flaws or faults.  We are a moon with a dark side no one sees!  Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde!  Being a Christian isn't about rules or a list of dos and don'ts but dedication and commitment to Christ, who said, "Follow Me!"  Even Plato realized that to know how to live in reality, we must know what God is really like.   We experience God and grow in the knowledge of Him as we put it to use and apply what we know:  "Now that you know these things, blessed are you if you do them."  (Cf. John 13:17).

Now a good person learns to live according to faith, not feeling, which can be as variable as a weather vane in a storm.  There's no walking around on cloud nine or on some spiritual, perpetual high either.  He doesn't necessarily feel on top of things all the times, or even in control, but keeps the faith--he does 't go by feelings.  He doesn't know all the answers or what's going sometimes but knows the Answerer and the One in control.   He learns to know right leads to thinking right, which leads to doing right and finally feeling right.   The good life is the byproduct of being focused and living on purpose to glorify God and never for oneself.  The only truly happy people, according to Albert Schweitzer, are those who've learned to serve.  We never know how bad we are until we've tried to be good, and we cannot be good without realizing how bad we are!            Soli Deo Gloria!