This is the perfect devotional for us because we use it first thing in the morning and turn it into a mini Bible study.
Often within each devotional, a verse will be mentioned and that expands into further Bible study if desired. The devotionals are written in a manner that tie in with real-life experiences which makes them feel personal, and children can identify with them easily. Download or Buy eBook Here. They spend their entire lives running from regrets and hiding their shame. Guilt-driven people are manipulated by memories. They allow their past to control their future.
They often unconsciously punish themselves by sabotaging their own success. We are products of our past, but we don't have to be prisoners of it. God's purpose is not limited by your past. He turned a murderer named Moses into a leader and a coward named Gideon into a courageous hero, and he can do amazing things with the rest of your life, too.
God specializes in giving people a fresh start. The Bible says, "What happiness for those whose guilt has been forgiven! What relief for those who have confessed their sins and God has cleared their record. They hold on to hurts and never get over them. Instead of releasing their pain through forgiveness, they rehearse it over and over in their minds.
Some resentment-driven people "clam up" and internalize their anger, while others "blow up" and explode it onto others. Both responses are unhealthy and unhelpful. Resentment always hurts you more than it does the person you resent. While your offender has probably forgotten the offense and gone on with life, you continue to stew in your pain, perpetuating the past. Listen: Those who have hurt you in the past cannot continue to hurt you now unless you hold on to the pain through resentment.
Your past is past! Nothing will change it. You are only hurting yourself with your bitterness. For your own sake, learn from it, and then let it go. The Bible says, "To worry yourself to death with resentment would be a foolish, senseless thing to do. Their fears may be a result of a traumatic experience, unrealistic expectations, growing up in a high-control home, or even genetic predisposition. Regardless of the cause, fear-driven people often miss great opportunities because they're afraid to venture out.
Instead they play it safe, avoiding risks and trying to maintain the status quo. Fear is a self-imposed prison that will keep you from becoming what God intends for you to be. You must move against it with the weapons of faith and love.
The Bible says, "Well formed love banishes fear. Since fear is crippling, a fearful life fear of death, fear of judgment-is one not yet fully formed in love. Their desire to acquire becomes the whole goal of their lives. This drive to always want more is based on the misconceptions that having more will make me more happy, more important, and more secure, but all three ideas are untrue.
Possessions only provide temporary happiness. Because things do not change, we eventually become bored with them and then want newer, bigger, better versions. It's also a myth that if I get more, I will be more important. Self-worth and net worth are not the same. Your value is not determined by your valuables, and God says the most valuable things in life are not things! The most common myth about money is that having more will make me more secure. It won't. Wealth can be lost instantly through a variety of uncontrollable factors.
Real security can only be found in that which can never be taken from you-your relationship with God. Many people are driven by the need for approval. They allow the expectations of parents or spouses or children or teachers or friends to control their lives. Many adults are still trying to earn the approval of unpleasable parents.
Others are driven by peer pressure, always worried by what others might think. Unfortunately, those who follow the crowd usually get lost in it. I don't know all the keys to success, but one key to failure is to try to please everyone. Being controlled by the opinions of others is a guaranteed way to miss God's purposes for your life.
Jesus said, "No one can serve two masters. This forty-day journey will show you how to live a purpose driven life-a life guided, controlled, and directed by God's purposes. Without a purpose, life is motion without meaning, activity without direction, and events without reason. Without a purpose, life is trivial, petty, and pointless. Nothing matters more than knowing God's purposes for your life, and nothing can compensate for not knowing them.
We were made to have meaning. This is why people try dubious methods, like astrology or psychics, to discover it. When life has meaning, you can bear almost anything; without it, nothing is bearable. A young man in his twenties wrote, "I feel like a failure because I'm struggling to become something, and I don't even know what it is. All I know how to do is to get by. Someday, if I discover my purpose, I'll feel I'm beginning to live. Without meaning, life has no significance or hope.
In the Bible, many different people expressed this hopelessness. Isaiah complained, "I have labored to no purpose; I have spent my strength in pain and for nothing.
Leave me alone. My life makes no sense. Hope is as essential to your life as air and water. You need hope to cope. Bernie Siegel found he could predict which of his cancer patients would go into remission by asking, "Do you want to live to be one hundred? Hope comes from having a purpose. If you have felt hopeless, hold on! Wonderful changes are going to happen in your life as you begin to live it on purpose. God says, "I know what I am planning for you I will give you hope and a good future.
It defines what you do and what you don't do. Your purpose becomes the standard you use to evaluate which activities are essential and which aren't. You simply ask, "Does this activity help me fulfill one of God's purposes for my life? You will tend to make choices based on circumstances, pressures, and your mood at that moment.
It is impossible to do everything people want you to do. You have just enough time to do God's will. If you can't get it all done, it means you're trying to do more than God intended for you to do or, possibly, that you're watching too much television. Purpose-driven living leads to a simpler lifestyle and a saner schedule. The Bible says, "A pretentious, showy life is an empty life; a plain and simple life is a full life.
It concentrates your effort and energy on what's important. You become effective by being selective. It's human nature to get distracted by minor issues. We play Trivial Pursuit with our lives. Henry David Thoreau observed that people live lives of "quiet desperation," but today a better description is aimless distraction. Many people are like gyroscopes, spinning around at a frantic pace but never going anywhere.
Without a clear purpose, you will keep changing directions, jobs, relationships, churches, or other externals-hoping each change will settle the confusion or fill the emptiness in your heart. You think, Maybe this time it will be different, but it doesn't solve your real problem-a lack of focus and purpose.
The Bible says, "Don't live carelessly, unthinkingly. Make sure you understand what the Master wants. Diffused light has little power or impact, but you can concentrate its energy by focusing it. With a magnifying glass, the rays of the sun can be focused to set grass or paper on fire. When light is focused even more as a laser beam, it can cut through steel. There is nothing quite as potent as a focused life, one lived on purpose.
The men and women who have made the greatest difference in history were the most focused. For instance, the apostle Paul almost single-handedly spread Christianity throughout the Roman Empire. His secret was a focused life. He said, "I am focusing all my energies on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead.
Stop dabbling. Stop trying to do it all. Do less. Prune away even good activities and do only that which matters most. Never confuse activity with productivity. You can be busy without a purpose, but what's the point? Paul said, "Let's keep focused on that goal, those of us who want everything God has for us. Purpose always produces passion.
Nothing energizes like a clear purpose. On the other hand, passion dissipates when you lack a purpose. Just getting out of bed becomes a major chore. It is usually meaningless work, not overwork, that wears us down, saps our strength, and robs our joy. George Bernard Shaw wrote, "This is the true joy of life: the being used up for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clot of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.
Many people spend their lives trying to create a lasting legacy on earth. They want to be remembered when they're gone. Yet, what ultimately matters most will not be what others say about your life but what God says. What people fail to realize is that all achievements are eventually surpassed, records are broken, reputations fade, and tributes are forgotten. In college, James Dobson's goal was to become the school's tennis champion.
He felt proud when his trophy was prominently placed in the school's trophy cabinet. Years later, someone mailed him that trophy. They had found it in a trashcan when the school was remodeled. Jim said, "Given enough time, all your trophies will be trashed by someone else!
A wiser use of time is to build an eternal legacy. You weren't put on earth to be remembered. You were put here to prepare for eternity. One day you will stand before God, and he will do an audit of your life, a final exam, before you enter eternity.
The Bible says, "Remember, each of us will stand personally before the judgment seat of God Yes, each of us will have to give a personal account to God. The only thing that will matter is, did you accept what Jesus did for you and did you learn to love and trust him? Jesus said, 'clam the way and the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father except through me. Did you spend them on yourself, or did you use them for the purposes God made you for? The first question will determine where you spend eternity. The second question will determine what you do in eternity. By the end of this book you will be ready to answer both questions. What do I want it to be? Ecclesiastes N LT Surely God would not have created such a being as man to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality. Abraham Lincoln This life is not all there is.
Life on earth is just the dress rehearsal before the real production. You will spend far more time on the other side of death-in eternity-than you will here. Earth is the staging area, the preschool, the tryout for your life in eternity. It is the practice workout before the actual game; the warm-up lap before the race begins. This life is preparation for the next. At most, you will live a hundred years on earth, but you will spend forever in eternity.
Your time on earth is, as Sir Thomas Browne said, "but a small parenthesis in eternity. The Bible says, "God has This is because God designed you, in his image, to live for eternity. Even though we know everyone eventually dies, death always seems unnatural and unfair. The reason we feel we should live forever is that God wired our brains with that desire! One day your heart will stop beating.
Your earthly body is just a temporary residence for your spirit. The Bible calls your earthly body a "tent," but refers to your future body as a "house. Your relationship to God on earth will determine your relationship to him in eternity.
If you learn to love and trust God's Son, Jesus, you will be invited to spend the rest of eternity with him. On the other hand, if you reject his love, forgiveness, and salvation, you will spend eternity apart from God forever. When you fully comprehend that there is more to life than just here and now, and you realize that life is just preparation for eternity, you will begin to live differently.
You will start living in light of eternity, and that will color how you handle every relationship, task, and circumstance. Suddenly many activities, goals, and even problems that seemed so important will appear trivial, petty, and unworthy of your attention. The closer you live to God, the smaller everything else appears.
When you live in light of eternity, your values change. You use your time and money more wisely. You place a higher premium on relationships and character instead of fame or wealth or achievements or even fun.
Your priorities are reordered. Keeping up with trends, fashions, and popular values just doesn't matter as much anymore. Paul said, "I once thought all these things were so very important, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done.
You could forget being good and ethical, and you wouldn't have to worry about any consequences of your actions. You could indulge yourself in total self-centeredness because your actions would have no long-term repercussions.
But-and this makes all the difference-death is not the end of you! Death is not your termination, but your transition into eternity, so there are eternal consequences to everything you do on earth. Every act of our lives strikes some chord that will vibrate in eternity.
The most damaging aspect of contemporary living is short-term thinking. To make the most of your life, you must keep the vision of eternity continually in your mind and the value of it in your heart. There's far more to life than just here and now!
Today is the visible tip of the iceberg. Eternity is all the rest you don't see underneath the surface. What is it going to be like in eternity with God? Frankly, the capacity of our brains cannot handle the wonder and greatness of heaven. It would be like trying to describe the Internet to an ant.
It's futile. The Bible says, "No mere man has ever seen, heard or even imagined what wonderful things God has ready for those who love the Lord. We know that right now God is preparing an eternal home for us. In heaven we will be reunited with loved ones who are believers, released from all pain and suffering, rewarded for our faithfulness on earth, and reassigned to do work that DAY FOUR: we will enjoy doing.
We won't lie around on clouds with halos playing harps! We will enjoy unbroken fellowship with God, and he will enjoy us for an unlimited, endless forever. One day Jesus will say, "Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. Lewis captured the concept of eternity on the last page of the Chronicles of Narnia, his seven-book children's fiction series: "For us this is the end of all the stories But for them it was only the beginning of the real story.
All their life in this world His plan involves far more than the few decades you will spend on this planet. It's more than "the opportunity of a lifetime"; God offers you an opportunity beyond your lifetime.
The Bible says, "[God's] plans endure forever; his purposes last eternally. You may feel it's morbid to think about death, but actually it's unhealthy to live in denial of death and not consider what is inevitable.
Only a fool would go through life unprepared for what we all know will eventually happen. You need to think more about eternity, not less. Just as the nine months you spent in your mother's womb were not an end in themselves but preparation for life, so this life is preparation for the next.
If you have a relationship with God through Jesus, you don't need to fear death. It is the door to eternity. It will be the last hour of your time on earth, but it won't be the last of you. Rather than being the end of your life, it will be your birthday into eternal life. The Bible says, "This world is not our home; we are looking forward to our everlasting home in heaven. Measured against eternity, our time on earth is just a blink of an eye, but the consequences of it will last forever.
The deeds of this life are the destiny of the next. Matthew Henry said, "It ought to be the business of every day to prepare for our final day. Verse to Remember: "This world is fading away, along with everything it craves. But if you do the will of God, you will live forever:" 1 John NLT Question to Consider: Since I was made to last forever, what is the one thing I should stop doing and the one thing I should start doing today?
James b NIV We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are. Anais Nin The way you see your life shapes your life. How you define life determines your destiny. Your perspective will influence how you invest your time, spend your money, use your talents, and value your relationships. One of the best ways to understand other people is to ask them, "How do you see your life?
I've been told life is a circus, a minefield, a roller coaster, a puzzle, a symphony, a journey, and a dance. People have said, "Life is a carousel: Sometimes you're up, sometimes you're down, and sometimes you just go round and round" or "life is a ten-speed bicycle with gears we never use" or "life is a game of cards: You have to play the hand you are dealt.
That image is your life metaphor. It's the view of life that you hold, consciously or unconsciously, in your mind. It's your description of how life works and what you expect from it. People often express their life metaphors through clothes, jewelry, cars, hairstyles, bumper stickers, even tattoos. Your unspoken life metaphor influences your life more than you realize.
For instance, if you think life is a party, your primary value in life will be having fun. If you see life as a race, you will value speed and will probably be in a hurry much of the time. If you view life as a marathon, you will value endurance. If you see life as a battle or a game, winning will be very important to you. What is your view of life?
You may be basing your life on a faulty life metaphor. To fulfill the purposes God made you for, you will have to challenge conventional wisdom and replace it with the biblical metaphors of life. The Bible says, "Do not conform yourselves to the standards of this world, but let God transform you inwardly by a complete change of your mind. Then you will be able to know the will of God. These ideas are the foundation of purpose-driven living.
We will look at the first two in this chapter and the third one in the next. Life on earth is a Test. This life metaphor is seen in stories throughout the Bible. God continually tests people's character, faith, obedience, love, integrity, and loyalty.
Words like trials, temptations, refining, and testing occur more than times in the Bible. God tested Abraham by asking him to offer his son Isaac. God tested Jacob when he had to work extra years to earn Rachel as his wife. Adam and Eve failed their test in the Garden of Eden, and David failed his tests from God on several occasions. But the Bible also gives us many examples of people who passed a great test, such as Joseph, Ruth, Esther, and Daniel.
Character is both developed and revealed by tests, and all of life is a test. You are always being tested. God constantly watches your response to people, problems, success, conflict, illness, disappointment, and even the weather! He even watches the simplest actions such as when you open a door for others, when you pick up a piece of trash, or when you're polite toward a clerk or waitress.
We don't know all the tests God will give you, but we can predict some of them, based on the Bible. You will be tested by major changes, delayed promises, impossible problems, unanswered prayers, undeserved criticism, and even senseless tragedies. In my own life I have noticed that God tests my faith through problems, tests my hope by how I handle possessions, and tests my love through people.
A very important test is how you act when you can't feel God's presence in your life. Sometimes God intentionally draws back, and we don't sense his closeness. A king named Hezekiah experienced this test. The Bible says, "God withdrew from Hezekiah in order to test him and to see what was really in his heart.
When you understand that life is a test, you realize that nothing is insignificant in your life. Even the smallest incident has significance for your character development.
Every day is an important day, and every second is a growth opportunity to deepen your character, to demonstrate love, or to depend on God. Some tests seem overwhelming, while others you don't even notice. Whether young adults are pursuing a career or further education, this guide will help them prepare for the futureand eternity. As a pastor's wife and pastor's daughter, Kay Warren has learned from years of experience about the unique role women play in ministry.
In Sacred Privilege , she gives an inside look at the significance and impact of pastors' wives, the ups and downs of ministry life, and offers affirmation to those who feel the pressure of a public position.
Kay's warm and wise advice will give you the confidence you need to lead and live well. Whether you're coming from a place of joy and excitement, or are feeling tired, you'll see how your work and effort are worth the risk. Lord, it will appear in due time through the mediation of a Gentile. The interpretation of this is through the gift of God.
It is also an abbreviated chronicle, taken from the book of Efer, which contains the history of a people when it builds a tower to reach Load more books. To browse Academia. Skip to main content. By using our site, you agree to our collection of information through the use of cookies.
To learn more, view our Privacy Policy. Log In Sign Up. Like a twist on John F. Kennedy's famous inaugural address, this book could. This is not about self-exploration; it is about purposeful devotion to a Christian God. The book is.
As an inspirational manifesto for creating a more. Every page is laden with references to scripture. Crazy Busy is no exception. Please watch out for them, and take the time to read and discuss with your child, praising their efforts. The PDF file is designed to fit on one page using both front and back sides. Christian Broadcasting Network - Christian news, television programming, ministry resources, prayer requests, the club, Operation Blessing, Superbook, Orphans Promise and more.
It's time to examine Warren's theology.
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