Good Day II

In Psalm 90, we can read a passage of Scripture that encourages us to live with the recognition that God wants us to live in a way that brings glory to Him - it's a daily challenge, but can bring daily satisfaction. We read:
12 So teach us to number our days, That we may gain a heart of wisdom.
13 Return, O Lord! How long? And have compassion on Your servants.
14 Oh, satisfy us early with Your mercy, That we may rejoice and be glad all our days!

The Bible, in the book of Lamentations, tells us that the mercies of God are "new every morning." Each day, we can wake up with expectation of seeing God work in our lives that day.  Our days may be troublesome or triumphant, but the point is to surrender to God and His Word no matter what the circumstances may attempt to dictate.  We can be joyful, knowing that He is with us and walks with us, desiring to demonstrate His faithfulness to us.  No wonder Jeremiah wrote in that passage in Lamentations: "Great is Your faithfulness."

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We can be good stewards of the units of time that God has entrusted to us - each moment, each day,
can be lived for Him, with an awareness of His presence. Ephesians 5 states:
14 Therefore He says: "Awake, you who sleep, Arise from the dead, And Christ will give you light."
15 See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise,
16 redeeming the time, because the days are evil.
17 Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is.

Yesterday, I talked about the concept of having good days and bad days.  And, the difference might all boil down to the degree of submission to Christ that we experience.

It's interesting, last week's Famous Friday subjects were making news again this week.  Justin Bieber, according to a Faithwire story, was spotted with fiancee Hailey Baldwin in a "tearful moment" this past week.  The story says that he had acquired a Christian book about marriage - it said:

When photographers and fans asked how Bieber and Baldwin were doing following their overtly emotional moment, Justin simply held up the book for paparazzi to snap a pic. “This,” he said, pointing to the book. “You got good days and you got bad days,” the musician told TMZ as he left Hailey’s apartment building.

“It’s not real if it doesn’t have any bad days,” Bieber added...

Noted Christian athlete Tim Tebow experienced what could be considered a "bad day" recently - he was an All-Star in the Eastern League, a AA league in minor league baseball, and there was some speculation that he might be headed for a stint in the majors with the abysmal Mets in September.  Unfortunately, that was put to rest when he broke his hand.  Tebow will no doubt be busy with SEC Nation this fall and has a new book coming out, called, This is the Day, that speaks to the issue of making sure that our days are lived for Christ.  On the Faithwire site, we can read:

In a video promoting the forthcoming book, Tebow said, “We just don’t know how many days we’re going to have. That’s why it’s so important to live each day as if it’s on purpose, to live each day as if it’s the last day that you have.”

“Yes, that sounds cliché, but what if we did it?” he continued. “Imagine the impact that we would have, imagine the meaning and the purpose that we would have. That’s why I wrote ‘This is the Day.’”

And, Kirk Cameron has sounded off recently about the importance of recognizing our need to depend on Christ, which I think is a key component of daily living as a Christian. Another Faithwire story says Cameron, on "Pure Talk" at PureFlix.com, related "some of the challenges he has faced when speaking out about his Christian worldview."

The article continued:

"We could talk about the risk of being truthful and honest in a very politically charged and politically correct environment and what are those risks and what are the rewards,” Cameron said. “That’s just par for the course if you have convictions.”

The actor said people must allow their morals, ethics, and core values to be “determined by something higher than the culture” around them, particularly if they want to live as a person of faith and integrity.

But the most difficult challenge?

“I think the hardest lesson is really no different in Hollywood than [anywhere else]. I think it’s the lesson that, apart from God, I really can do nothing,” he said. “That if there’s anything good in me it’s got to be the spirit of God abiding in me, producing good fruit — because left to my own devices I’ll end up probably making a mess of things.”

Such a key - when we surrendered to Christ as our Savior, we made the decision that life was to no longer to be about glorifying ourselves or seeking to please ourselves, but to please, love, and serve the One Who has made us.  And, that is an incredible principle to remember in our daily living.  As Jesus said, without God, we can do nothing.  But, do we really show that we believe that by the way we live?  That's a serious area for evaluation.

We have traded our lives for His, spiritually speaking.  But there is the human tendency to live according to our own way, our own fallible wisdom, and then place a God-stamp on it.  We might claim to be followers, but end up following our own whims and then adopt a mindset of God following us and bail us out when things go awry.  Essentially.  We have to be careful that we are dying to ourselves so that Christ might live large in us.

And, this applies in so many areas - whether it be marriage, or finances, or relationships.  In fact, next week on The Meeting House, pastor Ronnie Floyd will be talking about making sure that our spiritual lives are connected to all the other parts of our lives, so that we might, as the book title suggests, Live Fit.  Bieber flashed a Christian book about marriage and Tebow has written about purpose - we recognize that our walk with God is at the center of our existence and that we are to put His presence and priorities first.