GraceCreates

By Jon Walker

The master was full of praise. ‘Well done, my good and faithful servant.’ (Matthew 25:21 NLT)

God is equipping you to make a difference in his world. Rick Warren teaches that the donation of your life matters more than the duration of your life.

Do you really want your life to be significant in 2008? Then begin investing your time and money into showing people how they can make peace with God. That’s an investment that will make a difference, not for 10 years, or 50 years, or even 1,000 years; it will make a difference for eternity.

Quite honestly, there is nothing more significant you can do with your life. There is no more significant use of your time or resources than to help other human beings learn about Jesus. If you help just one person get into heaven, your life will have been eternally significant.

Charlene, a nurse in the Saddleback Church congregation, says God taught her to give her life to something bigger than just living for herself. “I’m a nurse, and when I heard about the tsunami that struck Indonesia [several years ago], I felt God calling me to help,” she says. “I was nervous because the area we were going to serve in is devoutly Muslim. I wasn’t sure how the people would react to us being Christians.

“God gave me so much love for all the people, and we felt the Spirit moving,” says Charlene. “I know seeds were planted, and I believe that someday many of those people will come to know Christ. God showed me that he would protect and take care of us. It was a wonderful experience. It makes me want to give my life to something bigger than just living for myself.”

What does this mean?

• Ask God about the donation of your life – Ask God what he wants your donation to be in the years you have left.
• Believe God wants to use you – You can change the world, one person at a time.
• Question to consider – What do you need to change in your life so you can begin living for godly significance?

Jon Walker is the teaching pastor for “The Purpose Driven Life Daily Devotionals,” and resident writer at www.GraceCreates.com. This devotional is copyrighted 2007 by Jon Walker. Used by permission.

By Jon Walker

Suddenly, the angel was joined by a vast host of others – the armies of heaven – praising God: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace on earth to all whom God favors.” (Luke 2:13-14, NLT)

Long ago and far away, there was a teacher who worked painstakingly to teach me how to play the guitar. Every week, we’d climb up and down musical stairs crafted from the pentatonic, hexatonic, heptatonic, and octatonic scales. This emphasis upon technique frustrated me, and I grew to hate it so much that I abandoned the guitar – until playing it again became a positive part of my mid-life crisis.

OK, OK … yes, I would have been better guitar player today if I’d practiced what my teacher told me (and, kids, eat your spinach too). But somehow I became so buried in the technique of making music that I lost the exhilarating pleasure of the music – with its power to make my heart soar toward the grace-filled face of God.

You might say the how of guitar-ianity muted the wow of the music.

And in our well-intentioned focus on the how of Christianity, I sometimes wonder if we lose sight of the wow – that God’s Holy Spirit lives within us, and that he is with us always, day after day after day, until the very end of time.

Wow!

Say this with me, brothers and sisters:

• Wow! The God of the universe is present by his Spirit within me!
• Wow! The God who spoke the world into existence lives within me!
• Wow! The same God who placed the moon and the stars and the sun in the sky also placed his Spirit within me!
• Wow! The God who owns the cattle on a thousand hills considers me one of his heirs and is pleased to give me a share in his kingdom!
• Wow! The God of Creation spoke me into my mother’s womb, SHAPEd me as a masterpiece crafted for the mission of proclaiming his Wow! throughout the world! (Jeremiah 1:5)

It’s not the how; it’s the wow!

God Almighty! He lives, he lives, Christ Jesus lives in me today! (Galatians 2:20) The Wow! is with me always and forever, yesterday today and tomorrow, forever and again, amen.

What does this mean?

• Set your heart on the WOW – You must be deliberate in staying focused on the Wow! “Set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.” (Colossians 3:1b-2, NIV)
• The Good News – Wow! – We proclaim without shame that the Wow! is in our hearts, and the Wow! will come into any heart that confesses Jesus Christ as Lord.
• No commandment harmed – No commandment was harmed in the making of this devotional. Ha! Staying intimately focused on the Wow! does not suggest the how is unimportant or that the Wow! compromises biblical truth or downgrades “the way, the truth, and the life.” (John 14:6, HCSB)

Jolly, Holy Christmas Quiz – We know there were three wise men, some frankincense and myrrh, and a huge star on the first Christmas Day. Plus, there were shepherd’s watching their flock on a cold, silent night in winter, a little drummer boy, and the littlest angel … wait a minute, how much of this is tradition, and how much of it is based in the Bible? You may be surprised at what you find in this Biblical Christmas Quiz, available at www.GraceCreates.com.

Jon Walker is the teaching pastor for “The Purpose Driven Life Daily Devotionals,” and resident writer at www.GraceCreates.com. This devotional is copyrighted 2007 by Jon Walker. Used by permission.