Outcomes

“Fear of the Lord is the foundation of wisdom. Knowledge of the Holy One results in good judgment.” (Proverbs 9:10 NLT)

The knowledge upon which the foundation of our lives is built will determine to a large extent the outcomes of the issues with which we wrestle as a human being. What we believe about God or anything else is only as good as the information we’ve been given about Him or any other subject.

Say, for example, that I’ve asked you to build me a shed for my back yard. It must fit into a very specific area, so, if it’s too wide, too high, or too deep – if any of those dimensions are off, it won’t work.

Similarly, the Lord has outlined in His Word the “dimensions” He requires for our lives to fit into His plan. He begins, as Jesus explained in Matthew 22:37, with: “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.” In short, with every dimension of our being.

How does that translate for us? It essentially means to love the Lord with our time, money, energy, relationships, with our work, our recreation, our family, in short, every avenue of our lives. There isn’t an exception. To pretend to love God and believe that doesn’t have implication and application to every avenue and dimension of our life is to misunderstand “all” as it’s used in Jesus’ words.

The word Jesus used means “all, whole, every whit, altogether, throughout, completely.” Yet, we want to live as we please and justify it by asking for forgiveness or going to church or being nice to the clerk at the grocery store or in a thousand other little ways we think will somehow make up for our neglect of loving the Lord without reservation.

We sow “self” and want to “reap” Christ-likeness; we want to live as we please and expect our crumbs to be acceptable to a Holy God. We aren’t enough in and of ourselves. If we were Jesus wouldn’t have needed to die in our place. Our sin separates us from God and prevents our outcomes from being pleasing to God.

Corky Calhoun wrote: “The outcomes of our horizontal circumstances in this world, hinges solely upon our vertical relationship with the God who created it in the first place.” How I understand that is what we sow, we’ll reap; to the extent we love, honor, and obey the Lord, He will sanctify our efforts and bless our outcomes.

For example, if my efforts to reach my neighbors are simply to gain recognition and “glory” for myself, I may make a few friends, but it will have no eternal benefit, for me or for them. However, if everything I say or share with them is first approved of God and passed through the filter of His permission, I don’t have to be concerned with what my neighbors think of me, only what they think of Jesus.

It’s not my responsibility to be the Holy Spirit in my neighbors’ lives, I must trust God’s discretion in terms of how He speaks through what I say or write, and how He moves on their hearts to respond. The outcomes of whatever we do for the Lord or otherwise, are dependent upon the measure of dependence we’ve had on the Lord in the carrying out of whatever it was, whether a paper we write for school, an application we make for a job, or a sermon we preach for a congregation.

Food for thought.

Blessings, Ed 😊