By Daniel Garner
"For the Son of Man came to seek and save those who are lost" - Luke 19: 10
"All you need is the plan, the road map, and the courage to press onto your destination" - Earl Nightingale
One of the many things that I have been blessed with are amazing grandparents. While both of my grandfather's are veterans, one side of my family served the world over as missionaries while the other settled down in Arkansas and raised a successful cattle farm. Sometimes when I visit the farm I like to walk the property at night. It's not huge but it is over 80 acres. Which is usually not a problem, except for when your flashlight and your cellphone light both die.
So I'd like to give a shout out to my Boot Camp Drill Instructors for successfully screaming their way into years of subconscious flashbacks and allowing me to always find Polaris without having to play the saddest game of "Marco Polo with Farm Animals" ever!
Needless to say, though, that a situation like that isn't always one that I would want to walk into comfortably. Though we don't always have a choice on how to navigate our lives there are many instances where we do have a choice.
When you see something you don’t feel comfortable with, what do you do?
Flee? Join in?
Stay and tell yourself that it doesn't or won’t affect you?
I've heard examples of each one of those. Either we see it and turn around, we say “forget it” and join in or we naively tell ourselves that it doesn't matter, it won’t affect us. The thing about that is, is that on a long enough timeline whatever we gaze upon we become.
So think of a typical day for you. What do you see around you? Impurity, obscenities, gluttony or shameful acts? (God knows you played that 84th straight hour of Candy Crush last night). Or greatness, surrounding yourself with people of honor and character who are always striving to be good?
We are called to persevere. We are called to strive to be the best that we can be. And that came be pretty daunting sometimes. But you know what's great? Were not alone. Luke 19: 10 tells us "For the Son of Man came to seek and save those who are lost".
When everything seems empty and void, when simply waking up in the morning is a struggle that you worry someday you won't have the strength to fight. Those times, when we feel so alone and exhausted, when you're nearly given up hope-that's when God breaks through. When the Son of Man finds us. Our lives are full of tough choices. Good and evil play on the backdrop of our decisions.
But often times it's not just the extreme decisions that make us who we are. Many times, lives are won and lost in between the black and white choices. There is a difference between what we like to do, what we allow to happen or what we regret doing. One of the true tests of who we say we are is what we do when we’re confronted with something we don’t feel comfortable with.
Don't ever accept "well, that's the way the world is" as a reason not to strive to be the best that you could absolutely be. A better world starts with you. Yes, you. Even you.
Especially you.
We are all artists in our life. We mold, shape and form events, people and situations around us no matter how little we may think of ourselves.
So the question isn't whether we're artists in our life or not, but if our medium is potters' clay, or Play-Doh?
So it doesn't matter what others say about us.
We think it does, and part of us wants it to be so, but it doesn't. Our value is not dependent upon someone else's misguidedly skewed perception of us.
It doesn't matter what the world calls you. It doesn't matter what the media labels you. It matters what God knows you to be. When all of the world tells you what makes them feel better about themselves and they tell you to move, don't you budge. Not an inch.
When skeptics scream at you and shout you plant yourself by the spiritual roots that the Word of God has planted within and you say: "No. YOU MOVE"
The Takeaway: We have to watch that our talents don't ever outweigh our character. We're confronted with hundreds of decisions a day and in a world that wouldn't bat an eye over an unscrupulous act it's ever more important that we do the right thing!