What Do We Do?

Sometimes it can be beneficial to just take a step back, a big step, and think about life.  I mean, what is life and more specifically, what is your life?  Now if you’re a mom or a dad with three children under the age of ten, you probably don’t have time to think about his because you’re too busy with the aforementioned three children.  But if you ever have a few moments of peace and quiet, you should as yourself, “What am I doing with my life?”  If you’re like many people, you are:  working, making food, eating food, going somewhere to buy that food, cleaning your home, taking a  shower, getting dressed, sleeping . . . you get the idea.  You spend a lot of time doing things . . . necessary things, no doubt , but things that keep having to be done with no real end in sight until you die . . . and that is not a very pleasant thought!

What’s the Point . . . in This Life?

Do you have a goal?  Hopefully, heaven is your ultimate goal, and that’s great, but are there any other goals?  You might have a career goal or a getting married goal or a having children goal.  Those are all fine, but are any of your goals spiritual and not just physical?

Some Possibilities

If you already have a variety of spiritual goals in your life that you are currently working on you can probably stop reading this now, but feel free to continue.  I would like to suggest some goals that you might want to consider.  I am not suggesting that everyone needs to adopt all of these, but if none are on your radar . . . .

  • Live your life with spiritual intention – We live in physical bodies in a physical world, so physical needs are usually pretty obvious. And when we do not have our physical needs met, we notice it.  By contrast, spiritual needs can easily go unsatisfied and we might never even notice.
  • Spreading the Word – When you die, assuming you have Bible knowledge, the collective amount of Bible knowledge in this world, on a global scale, will be diminished by what you know/knew. If you are not sharing that knowledge with others, the overall knowledge pool diminishes over the course of time.  If instead you are sharing your biblical knowledge with others, both Christians and non-Christians, you are helping to grow that knowledge pool.
  • Encouragement – In Acts 4:36, there was a man named Joseph. The apostles called him Barnabas, which means “son of encouragement.”  Clearly this man was good at encouraging others.  Are you?  Do you encourage people to do what is right?  Do you encourage people to be spiritually-minded(Gal. 5:13-16, 22-25)?  Do you go to other congregations’ gospel meetings?  That encourages both the speaker and the congregation.  Tell someone you appreciate them . . .and why!
  • Be Thankful – Like when someone encourages you. It’s easy to thank God for the good(physical) things in our lives.  We notice those.  But what about our spiritual blessings?  Do we thank God for those?  Do we thank other people for the spiritual blessings they bring into our lives:  a good class taught; a good sermon preached; a good example shared; a godly life lived?
  • Planning – We make a lot of physical plans. Do we make spiritual plans?  Do we plan to read a book of the Bible or study one?  Do we purchase a commentary with the specific intent to use it while reading/studying a book of the Bible?  De we buy a lesson book and just work our way through it even fi there is no class using it?  De we invite others to joint us in our own private studies?  Would you like to start a small group study?  It will never happen without planning.

Conclusion - Don’t Get Frustrated

Not everything you plan to do will succeed.  Instead of allowing a failure to stop you, learn from that failure.  Then try again.  It is true that some things might not be possible, but that does not mean that nothing is possible.  All kinds of things are possible, but we will never know what will work and what will not work until we try(Eccl. 11:1-6).