Morning Devotional
October  5, 2005
"A Good Race" (Part 5)     
    by Don Emmitte

I pray that your love for each other will overflow more and more, and that you will keep on growing in your knowledge and understanding. For I want you to understand what really matters, so that you may live pure and blameless lives until Christ returns. May you always be filled with the fruit of your salvation--those good things that are produced in your life by Jesus Christ--for this will bring much glory and praise to God. (Philippians 1:9-11 N LT).

 

Wow! What a concept! What if you and I understood what really matters? Wouldn’t that change so much of our life?

 

As a parent I always tried to incorporate grace into our home. I must confess that I was not perfect by any means in the application of grace in our home. I had rules that I tried to design as a way to protect and teach my children, not to simply make life difficult for them. I am afraid that as I look back, some of those rules were at best silly and at worst discouraging and negative. We are all just as likely as the next to concentrate on things that, in the whole scheme of life, really don’t matter.

 

Let me make a suggestion born out of these experiences. When you find yourself teaching your children, ask yourself if the thing you are worried about protecting them from “really matters” or if it is just something that you’re upset about at the time. Many times I have found that I was probably over-reacting, but in some cases maybe under-reacting. I remember one silly example that illustrates my point very well. There was a time when I refused to let my son wear black sneakers. At the time, it was reported that gangs were using these “colors,” and I was afraid that it would give the wrong impression of my son to others.

 

Silly, isn’t it? However, you can see that I could have avoided the conflict by simply asking whether the color of his sneakers was something that really mattered. Had I thought about it, I’m sure I would have come to the conclusion that his character was such that it would have overridden the color of his shoes!

 

The same process can apply to your personal life also. Sometimes we get upset with ourselves over things that really don’t matter. We ought to ask ourselves, “When I consider my life, and the process of becoming more like Christ, what really matters?” Those are the things that should consume my greatest attention. Are you spending the energy of your life on what really matters? Building a great financial kingdom, in light of eternity, will not be nearly as important as building a great marriage or family. Building a great physical body (as important as this is) will pale in comparison to the need to build a great spiritual body in Christ. Ask God today to help you examine your life and determine what “really matters”.