What are the important things in life?
So what is success?
Having a professional job so you can make money to do whatever it is you do with your money.
Being really involved in your local "church" where people heap praise on you for your great spirituality, knowledge of the bible, and how committed you are and how much time you spend serving in the church. Giving your 10% tithe every week. Being a small group leader or involved in some other leadership role in the church.
Buying your own home and having that nice new car you always wanted.
Having the big screen TV home cinema set up with a wall full of your favourite DVDs.
Having your nice church friends over for dinner and maybe inviting some people from work to come so you can get them to meet your church friends and come to your super seeker friendly church services.
Getting married and having kids, making sure you can give them everything you didn't have when you were a kid, even though all they probably really want is you.
Does money, how comfortable your life is, how much cool new stuff you have, and how highly rated you are by your pastor or others from your church really matter? or in the end will it mean nothing except wasted hours of this thing called life.
So could success look like this.
You work a job where you get paid enough to get by and have necessary things like a house, food, clothes and one used car.
You get to church services on a Sunday maybe once a month, meet fortnightly with a small group of friends where you talk about life, God and the people you care about.
Having that family from across the street over for dinner because you know they were going to have takeaway pizza again for the fifth time this week.
Getting married and loving your wife like crazy because intimate relationships are what God is about, and you have kids if you can and adopt a couple as well because children should have a loving family. You teach your children to care about other kids and not be selfish. You teach them about this God who you are always discovering more about who came to earth as a baby boy, spent his first years as a refugee and became a carpenter because his earthly father was, but when he was thirty years old, having a mid life crisis found God wanted him to go wander the country like a nomad telling people about a God who thought religious men were idiots and that the poor, sick and whoever else who knew they needed God's help were much better representatives for Him. Who was killed by the idiot religious men, a Roman emperor and God, died on a cross and rose back to life beating death so we could have life now. Sorry I think that was just a bit of an off the side rant. Anyways...
So what is life and what are the important things in life?
Having a professional job so you can make money to do whatever it is you do with your money.
Being really involved in your local "church" where people heap praise on you for your great spirituality, knowledge of the bible, and how committed you are and how much time you spend serving in the church. Giving your 10% tithe every week. Being a small group leader or involved in some other leadership role in the church.
Buying your own home and having that nice new car you always wanted.
Having the big screen TV home cinema set up with a wall full of your favourite DVDs.
Having your nice church friends over for dinner and maybe inviting some people from work to come so you can get them to meet your church friends and come to your super seeker friendly church services.
Getting married and having kids, making sure you can give them everything you didn't have when you were a kid, even though all they probably really want is you.
Does money, how comfortable your life is, how much cool new stuff you have, and how highly rated you are by your pastor or others from your church really matter? or in the end will it mean nothing except wasted hours of this thing called life.
So could success look like this.
You work a job where you get paid enough to get by and have necessary things like a house, food, clothes and one used car.
You get to church services on a Sunday maybe once a month, meet fortnightly with a small group of friends where you talk about life, God and the people you care about.
Having that family from across the street over for dinner because you know they were going to have takeaway pizza again for the fifth time this week.
Getting married and loving your wife like crazy because intimate relationships are what God is about, and you have kids if you can and adopt a couple as well because children should have a loving family. You teach your children to care about other kids and not be selfish. You teach them about this God who you are always discovering more about who came to earth as a baby boy, spent his first years as a refugee and became a carpenter because his earthly father was, but when he was thirty years old, having a mid life crisis found God wanted him to go wander the country like a nomad telling people about a God who thought religious men were idiots and that the poor, sick and whoever else who knew they needed God's help were much better representatives for Him. Who was killed by the idiot religious men, a Roman emperor and God, died on a cross and rose back to life beating death so we could have life now. Sorry I think that was just a bit of an off the side rant. Anyways...
So what is life and what are the important things in life?
posted by John M @ 10:59 am
4 Comments:
At 06 October, 2007 17:45,
Anonymous said…
I can see where you are coming from but not sure if I totally agree with some of them.
I think that it is better if we can do more than just "get by"...I do believe God wants us to be able to help others...like having the family across the road over...but if we are just getting by then we won't have the resources to do that. I guess it depends on how we look after the resources God ahs given us...I'm not into prosperity for prosperity's sake but I do believe God wants us to be prosperous and sometimes it is the choices we make that dictates how prosperous we are. I don't think we have always been very good stewards over the years which has stopped us from being as generous as we would like.
also I think we should be in church as much as possible. we are told to not neglect meeting together regularly. I think once a month was not the writers intention. I don't think meeting fortnightly with a home group is a replacement for church. God wants us to do both as they serve different functions. I don't think fortnightly is necessarily a good interval either as it is hard to build relationships because if you miss one fortnight it is then 4 weeks til you meet with those people again. it is different if you are hanging with them at other times as well but that doesn't always happen. as you said God is about intimate relationship and frequency of contact is what nurtures that relationship. sure you aren't going to be intimate with every one but it is good when we go up to the house of the Lord together:) church is about community and community doesn't function well without commitment to the community...one of the main reasons we have church membership.
I think life is about being the kind of person that glorifies God and for different people that takes on a different look...one of the hardest things for me to accept!!
I think if God has called us to be leaders then we MUST be leaders...if he hasn't then we MUSTN'T be doing it!!
however our heart attitude has a lot to do with whether or not we should be doing what we are doing in life. if we are getting a better job so we can be comfortable, doing stuff at church to look good, buying stuff just because we can then that is not the kind of person that glorifies God...just glorifying self.
well that's my opinion for what it is worth...what do you think about those things?
I miss our long chats we used to have before you left home for Ballarat...I missed not having them when you lived with us in Adelaide.
love you heaps
Mum xoxo
At 09 October, 2007 13:57,
kelgell said…
You are a wise woman Mrs M!
Ü
At 12 October, 2007 00:16,
John M said…
I don't really think God really wants us to be prosperous, not in wealth, if i give to others out of the wealth i have, so what? that just means i am not totally selfish, and when you have plenty you just end up spending more on things you don't really need and wouldn't have if you didn't have so much money. i really don't think God wants us to live nice comfortable suburbian lives. Generosity is a trait the rich claim to have, but really it is the poor who are much more generous when they give from what the little they have.
Two rich men came by Jesus, one went away sad because Jesus told him to sell all he had and follow him, the other gave back 4 times to those he had taken from and more to the poor, and decided to follow Jesus.
I'm not saying everyone should sell what you have and give it away but that we should consider very carefully the money we have and the way we spend it. I just want to question the ideas and perceptions of what success is.
I also feel that the churches today lack the fluidness and flexibility that people need to be the church. if i had to work most sundays i wouldn't get to a church service, so what does that mean for people who work sundays. Churches need to be the church not do church. And if you were meeting with a small group of people fortnightly for a common gathering it doesn't mean that you don't spend time with those people outside of that, more so that you would see them regularly.
Intimacy and community don't come from church memebership and saying yeah i'll turn up to most things, you can count on me to show up. It comes from being on mission together and showing real love for each other, it takes getting involved in each others lives, praying together, what some call sharing life together, and not just with the people who say they are christians but the ones who wouldn't be caught dead near one. Also we are the house of the Lord, we don't have to go anywhere but together.
"I think life is about being the kind of person that glorifies God and for different people that takes on a different look...one of the hardest things for me to accept!!"
Agreed for different people it looks differently, but our hearts should look pretty much the same.
I think i need a poor man's mentality though, hmmmm.... don't know exactly what i mean by that, just that i know i don't want to be a rich man, cause they always get slammed in the gospels. Too much money is bad for me i know that and the more generous i can become with the less i have the better. I think our hearts are often too easily corrupted by the world and it's attractions.
I just don't think there is a use in having a whole lot of money if i just waste it and only give 10% to the offering when i should be giving 100% to Jesus.
At 22 October, 2007 15:39,
Christop said…
That made me cry. (Argh! Jesus is always making me cry!)
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