What a Time to Live
With Thanksgiving season come and gone and Christmas moving steadily closer I can't help but be happy and grateful for so much in life.
Loved what I heard from a devotional email this morning from Evangelist Tom Elie:
"Someone once said, 'my worst day with the Lord is better than my best day without the Lord!' In other words, as Christians we have reason to celebrate all the time. Why? Because we know the end of the story. We're going to heaven...we're forgiven.... we're loved!
Just stop and think about 'heaven' for 5 seconds. Don't you have an immediate smile on your heart? Don't you feel your stress starting to melt? So how can I keep this 'feast' going?
Here's the #1 key... my feelings don't have to rule me. I CAN have a merry heart and a continual thanksgiving feast when I take control of my thoughts and feelings through gratitude. The Bible says, 'as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.' Radio host Chuck Swindoll said it best when he said that 'life is 90% attitude, and 10% circumstances'.
When things don't go the way you and I expect (which is a lot of the time), remember the end of the story.... WE WIN! Everything else on earth is temporary. Only heaven is eternal. It's enough to make a grown-up shout "HAPPY THANKSGIVING" all year 'round!"
One thing I cannot help but be thankful for is the time in which we live. Most of my friends are young adults and life is just starting and picking up for us. So much potential, so much excitement!
I remember being asked the question growing up "if I could live in any time period, when would I want to live?" I used to think it would be nice to grow up like Davey Crockett. Now, with more understanding of our generation and our opportunities I know I would rather live RIGHT NOW than any other time!
Here's a few of my reasons, and what I think is marking and will define our generation:
1. Global Connectedness - The World is Flat according to Thomas Friedman because of the invention of personal computers and the internet and mass transit. We now daily (or even momentarily) correspond with people across the globe. Just yesterday I connected with friends in many different states of the country, and friends or connections in India, Guatemala, Argentina, Indonesia and Africa.
2. Ethnic Diversity - this has been traditionally a sad history in much of the world, much of the time, but continually in our generation churches are growing multi-cultural and young people in the US have grown up seeing not the color of people's skin, but the content of their hearts.
3. Cause - partially because it's the rage in Hollywood (but has always been cool in the Church) young people are identifying with things important to them that they can give financially to. This may be why in an official recession giving is up and expected to keep going up.
4. Increase in Intelligence - many young people I know are getting Master's Degrees already. It is the new Bachelor's. Along with this increased interest in furthering education, knowledge is much more readily available via the internet. Even by watching TV all day on channels like HGTV one can learn to flip a house, or the History Channel one can become an expert on all things ancient. We may become one of the most educated generations in history. It is my prediction that our generation will develop a degree beyond that of a Doctorate.
5. Spiritual Revival - it seems to an outsider that the US Church is out of ministers. There is an obvious age gap in Church leadership, but take it from me that I know hundreds of passionate young Evangelists, Pastors, Prophets, Apostles and Teachers who will take the world by storm in our generation! They are hidden from senior leadership at this moment, training, growing, but are dedicated to reaching our generation for Jesus Christ all across the world.
