Keep Your Mind On It

I Corinthians 14:15 I will pray with my spirit, but I will pray with my mind also; I will sing praise with my spirit, but I will sing with my mind also.

I am blessed to be a good reader.

          I can read almost anything without giving a bit of thought to what I am reading. 

          I can read a whole page of a book and not be able to tell you what I just read.

I do not always have my mind on what I am reading.

I am blessed to hear well (with the help of my hearing aids, that is). 

          I can sit in a group and hear everything that is said but when the group disperses, I cannot tell you what was said.

          I can sit at the dinner table and hear everything my hubby says, but I cannot tell you what he said when he is finished talking.

I did not have my mind on what I was hearing.

I cannot sing very well, but I do enjoy singing with the congregation at church.

          I can an entire song without thinking about a single word I sang.

I do not always have my mind on what I am singing.

In chapter fourteen of First Corinthians, the Apostle Paul is pointing out how the spiritual gifts God gives to believers are given to individuals for the benefit of the entire body of believers of which that person is a part.  (Gifts such as faith, discernment, teaching/preaching, speaking in tongues, and others mentioned in various locations in the New Testament). 

But did you notice what the Apostle Paul said in the verse quoted at the top of the page?

Pray and/or sing with my mind as well as my spirit.  

Keep my mind on what I am doing or saying. Don't do it mindlessly.

Pay attention to it. 

I must not let any of what I do or read or sing become so perfunctory that I do it mindlessly.

I need to pray, sing, read, and act in my spirit, doing it wholeheartedly and genuinely, but also in my mind. 

I need to KEEP MY MIND ON IT.

Disciple or Apostle?

 

Luke 6:13 ... He called his disciples and chose from them twelve, whom he named apostles.

What exactly was Jesus doing here?

We don’t often make a significant distinction between “disciple” and “apostle” so when I read this verse, I decided to look up the meanings of those two words to understand what was happening.  

A DISCIPLE is a student, a follower, a learner.

An APOSTLE is a delegate or ambassador, a representative.  

The implications of this distinction are huge when it comes to one’s relationship with Jesus.   

Up until now, the twelve men named were learning from Jesus. They were His DISCIPLES.

Now He was putting them in an advanced position.   

They were merely following Him before and now they would be acting as His representatives.

They would be speaking with His authority.

They would be acting on His behalf.  

 It makes me stop and think harder about my own relationship with Christ.   

Am I a DISCIPLE or an APOSTLE?   

Am I just a follower, or am I His representative to others? 

Lots of people continued to be Jesus‘ disciples during His ministry but these twelve men took on a higher level of commitment.

I want to be that committed to following Jesus. 

I want to be His representative to the people around me.

Consider Your Ways

Haggai 1:6 Consider your ways ...

The Jews in Jerusalem had been sent back from Babylon for the express purpose of rebuilding the temple almost 20 years before these events in Haggai.  They had started well, but the work on the temple rebuild had lapsed for several years.

That is why God sent the prophet Haggai to the people with a special message: 

                   Consider your ways.

The people were telling one another, "The time has not come to rebuild" (Haggai 1:2). How was it that they would say that if the main reason for their return to Jerusalem from exile in Babylon had been to rebuild?

There were some good reasons why they might say this, and why the work of rebuilding the temple had been delayed. Those reasons are all listed in Haggai 1:6:
           1. They were tired; the work was hard.

           2. They needed food and water.

           3. They needed clothing.

           4. They needed to make money.

Sounds like pretty good reasons to me. After all, we all need shelter, clothing, food, money.

But the problem in Haggai was not that they did not need food and shelter; it was that they had let those needs and efforts take precedence over the temple to the extent that they ignored the main reason for their return in the first place.  

Their priorities were off balance. 

The temple was the sign of God’s presence and preeminence in their lives, so not working on that structure was an indication that they had gotten off-track spiritually.

So God sent them several reminders. The message of Haggai 1:6 was to remind them: You have sown much, and harvested little. You eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill. You clothe yourselves, but no one is warm. And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes.

“Consider your ways,”  God says through the prophet Haggai. 

Haggai was saying to them: “STOP, LOOK AND LISTEN.”
           1. STOP what you are doing
           2. LOOK at what is happening
           3. LISTEN to what God is saying

Ask yourself these questions:

*What are you working for? Haggai 1:4 says, “Is it a time for you yourselves to dwell in your paneled houses, while this house lies in ruins? "

*Why are you working?  Haggai 1:8: "Go up to the hills and bring wood and build the house, that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified, says the Lord."

*What are your expectations in life? Haggai says in 1:9, "You looked for much, and behold, it came to little". 

I must keep my priorities straight if I want God's blessing on what I do. God's message to the Jews in Haggai's time is His message to me in 2023:

"Be strong, all you people of the land, declares the Lord. Work, for I am with you, declares the Lord of hosts." ~ Haggai 2:4

            

"Unimportant" People

 

Ezra 2:1 Now these were the people …

Does what we are and what we do as “unknowns” in our generation matter?  Essentially, in the grand scheme of life, I am not important.

I am not a person of importance; I am not famous for having or doing anything in particular. Does that mean that what kind of person I am or what I do is unimportant?  Is the idea of “unimportant” a valid one?

This chapter in Ezra lists people who were willing to take on a big trip and the enormous task of traveling to Jerusalem from Babylon to rebuild the city and the temple.  42,360+ people made the trip to Jerusalem, most of whom we do not know even their names, much less what they did specifically when they got to Jerusalem. 

But we know what motivated them.

Chances are none of them had ever been to Judah since the Israelites had been taken captive at least one generation earlier, so my guess is that these people had been born in Babylon.  I am quite certain their motivation was not to go down in history as names in the Bible I am reading over 2000 years later.   

No, I rather think they just wanted to follow God’s leading and calling on them to rebuild the temple, the house of God.  

But here I am, thousands of years later, reading of their choice to serve God in this way.  They wanted to help make a difference, so they left the home, family and friends they knew in Babylon to do so.

May that be my legacy into the future also; known for my desire and active participation in God's plan.

Even if no one even knows my name.  Even if I remain "unimportant."

Moreover it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful.  ~ 1 Corinthians 4:2

... that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments ... ~ Psalm 78:6-7