The Main Thing
OPENING PRAYER:
Heavenly Father, let us always adhere to your word, as Samuel inquired of Saul, “Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams,” (I Samuel 15:22, NIV).
“Now listen, you who say, “today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, “if it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast and brag. All such boasting is evil.” James 4:13-16
REFLECT:
What is the “main thing” for us in life? Lord willing, it is to love the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and mind and follow him in all our ways. There may be many ‘things’ we focus on during our day, but if we are always making the “main thing…the main thing,” we correctly have our focus on Jesus Christ and helping to build his kingdom. After all, this is what he commanded us to do in Matthew 28:19-20, NIV, “therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” This world can so easily entrap us into the pursuit of the almighty dollar, as the verses in James highlight today. We don’t know what tomorrow holds, but we know who does… the Lord our God. The writer of Ecclesiastes (most likely Solomon) says it best of this life, “I denied myself nothing my eyes desired, I refused my heart no pleasure. My heart took delight in all my work and this was the reward for all my labor. Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind; nothing was gained under the sun,” (Eccl. 2:10-11, NIV).
APPLY:
Each day we get up, we should ask the Lord to guide us to a more “purposeful life” lived out fully for him! Today’s world offers us more distractions than ever. I would dare say, many of us start out the day taking several minutes reviewing our cell phones. Asking ourselves, “who texted us overnight?” “What new Facebook posts are there?” “Whose birthday is it?” How about playing a few rounds of our favorite game to wake up? Hopefully, this very morning, you are reading this devotional and it will encourage you to give time to the things of God first. Instead, let’s ask ourselves, “whose life can we plant seeds of faith into today?” “Is there someone who needs help?” “How can we share Christ’s love with the world today?” “How can we further his kingdom and his plan for our lives?” Jesus challenges us in Matthew 16:24-25, NIV, saying “if anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.”
CLOSING PRAYER:
Dear God, teach me to set my wants aside, for you, so that others might come to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. As Luke 6:38, NIV, says, “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For what measure you use, it will be measured to you.”
WORSHIP: