The Ups and Downs

Sometimes an incredible idea or plan may come to me. I might be thrilled and excited about it, only to bring it before God and be told to forget about it.

The opposite is true too. A lot of what I feel God asks me to do is not what I want to do. In fact, it’s rarely the stuff that I want to do. It’s easy to let boredom or enthusiasm rule me. I have over and over and over again. How do we grow beyond this? How do we stop letting our feelings lead us and look beyond our own understanding? How do we truly live the purpose we were meant to live?

GOD SEES DIFFERENTLY

What it all comes down to is that God doesn’t value the same things that we do. What we perceive in our limited point in time and space is everything. We don’t see how our actions affect someone and all the people they will meet. We also can’t see how those actions will affect others across time. All we can see are finite things like wealth and appearance, and social media likes.

God is different. He can see across time and space and into eternity. He can see the fruits of our labor, even if we can’t. At times the things necessary to produce those fruits may seem tedious, and we don’t want to do them, but without those actions, the fruits will never bear. Without the watering or the planting of the seed, the tree will never grow.

If we don’t see from the right perspective, instead of following the promptings on our hearts, we put them off for another day. We focus on what we consider important. But what to us may seem incredibly important; God may look on with pity. For the fruits from those successes are far from eternal. They may even be gone tomorrow, and what did they cost us to achieve them? What did we give up?

HOW DO WE SEE DIFFERENTLY?

It takes time, but through reading His word, prayer, and listening to his promptings on our hearts, we can change from a temporal to an eternal perspective. Whether it seems boring or doesn’t make sense, no longer matters, all that matters is that we do the will of the one who gave us life. In that thankful spirit, even the seemingly mundane becomes exciting.

We may not be able to see all the fruits of our labor. We have no idea how the fruit we produce will feed others and allow them to produce fruits that will feed others, and so on. With a temporal perspective that can be discouraging, but with an eternal perspective that makes it all the more exciting (if we can get beyond our own fears of how it will affect our life in the here and now).

THE TRUTH

While the material and financial successes of others may seem fruitful, they are not eternal. Our companies, governments, and social media sites will all one day end. Though they may seem powerful now, that is only an illusion based on our limited understanding.

It’s only a matter of time before they end. There is no telling when that will happen, but it will happen. When it does, what will be more important. The fact that we appeared successful for a few years of our lives or the fact that we planted seeds that were eternal and echoed across time?

“What We Do In Life Echoes In Eternity” 

Maximus Decimus Meridius – Gladiator