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Every Day Bible

The Gift of Holy Ambition

What are the most important things in the world? My list looks something like this:

  1. My God. The One who created and sustains the universe, who loves me and molds me into his image, who forgives me and is always present with me.
  2. My family. Leslie, Caleb, Katie. My parents and in-laws. My siblings. My extended family.
  3. My friends. The people I share meals with and games with and ride motorcycles with and enjoy life with.
  4. My work. The job that I get to do and all the things that come along with it, including preparing to do it better.

I bet your list looks like my list. These are the things that matter most. Here’s my question this week: do we live our lives in a way that demonstrates our priorities?

People with Passion can Change the World for the Better

If I tell you that my family is important, but I never spend time with them because I’m always at work, you can see that something is out of balance. My actions have communicated that, in reality, they are less important than my job. If I tell you that my job is important, but I work half-heartedly and put in the bare minimum to get by, my actions say that my job is not that important. If I say that I’m a Christian but rarely do the “things” of Christianity—pray, worship, study, serve—my actions suggest that my faith really isn’t that important.

One of the best gifts that we can give ourselves and our families is the gift of holy ambition. Holy ambition is having a good and healthy desire for the things that matter most. Have you communicated to your family that your faith really matters? Are you passionate for the kingdom?

It’s so easy to get our priorities wrong.

We might work and play too hard all week long, then we find ourselves with a case of “Sunday Sickness” – that strange malady that strikes around 9am Sunday morning and miraculously clears up by 1 or 2 that afternoon.

We always can find a way to buy our next toy, but we’re always putting off giving to help others to next week.

We would never dare miss a practice for our sports team, but we wouldn’t bat an eye over skipping dinner with our kids or a study with our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Jesus said to seek first the kingdom of God (Matthew 6:33).

Paul said, “Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit” (Romans 12:11).

These are pictures of holy ambition—a desire to live passionately for all of the things that matter most. Give yourself and your family the gift of living for the things that matter most.

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Every Day Bible

Observation: What drew the most ‘amens’?

Enjoyed visiting the ol’ alma matter for Lectures today. Something stood out to me in one of the lectures I attended. The speaker made several comments that were met with yells of “amen.” Within a minute’s time, he made two statements that each were met with an enthusiastic response.

The first statement: “We need to realize that everything–it is all about Jesus.

The second statement: “We need to remember that the church is worth fighting for.”

The “amen” offered to the second statement was easily twice as loud as the first. That caught my attention.

There are several ways I could interpret this:

  1. We are living in a time in which people have not defended the church against slander, and it is really, really, really important we start defending her. Or,
  2. We like the idea of fighting for something better than we like the idea of personally living for Jesus.

I’ll leave the discussion as an exercise to the readers.