Month: February 2016

Keeping with the theme that has developed this week, here’s a simple question that when you unpack it has a lot of deep consequences.  It’s a question I have been thinking about as I have been thinking about what I want my 5 years older self to be.  The question is thus:

What breaks your heart?

Andy Stanley has a great 30-minute discussion about this question here, that I would recommend that you take the time to watch.  He calls it the better question and ends it with a thought I will comment on tomorrow.

My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise. Psalms 51:17

Oh yeah!  it’s the day when college football fans around the country  get all excited about finding out which young kids they will be trusting their fall Saturdays with for the next 5 years.  Yes, it’s National Signing Day!

Of course, I understand you probably have offers today to sign and commit as well, but I am offering you a chance sign up and get this great bit of daily encouragement directly in your inbox.  Just click this link and subscribe to Daily Buffet.  Yep, it’s that simple and it will deliver you hope and encouragement, even when you football doesn’t deliver it!

Messages of hope and commitment, just like this one:

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2He was in the beginning with God. 3All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.  John 1:1-4 ESV

This morning, I did a quick review of the drafts that I have on my blog.  There are currently 26 of them.  Most of those will never be posted, but at times, some of them turn into something interesting.  I thought this thought from June of 2014 was applicable as a follow-up to yesterday’s post about what you might look like in 5 years.

As I have written about a lot, I really enjoy the lyrics that All Sons and Daughters create and sing.  There’s one song, Dawn to Dusk that contains this particular sentence that really resonates with me:

Tomorrow’s Freedom is today’s Surrender.

hm.  No matter what we want to do tomorrow, we have to give up, or give in to something today.  The question is will you surrender in a way that creates  freedom in the future.  This is especially true in our spiritual realm.

Anyway, give it some thought as you meander through today.

Think about what you are surrendering to?

¹¹ For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people,¹² training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, ¹³ waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ,¹⁴ who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. Titus 2:11-14

Yep, 5 years from now you will be 5 years older than you are today.

But will you just be an older version of you or a different version of you?

Today is the first day to help decide the answer to that question.  After all, it is the first day of ‘Plant the Seeds of Greatness Month’.

Let us continue to grow and transform in ways today that when we look back in 2021, we will be proud of who we have become.

And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ,  Ephesians 4:11-15 ESV