5 Phrases That Guide My Life

What are the things that direct your life? What keeps you on the straight and narrow? What helps you set your moral compass?   In a world of chaos flooded with fuzzy inconsistent relativism we need markers, sign posts, along the way, to keep us on course.

There are 5 Phrases that run through my mind that guide my life and help me stay on course as a follower of Jesus. Now before all my preacher friends say, "Well the Bible should be the guide to your life" let me say that’s a given. The Bible is my ultimate source of reference for how I can live life abundantly. But these phrases, what you might call Pastor Rick’s Parables (PPP), summarize some pretty important biblical truth and give practical direction to my life in the midst of some of life’s trials. Perhaps you might find them helpful.

1. The most important thing you will do today is spend time with God.
I need to remember this every single day. My relationship with Jesus Christ is the most important thing in my life, it shapes everything else I do and say and am. It determines the man I am and if I don’t cultivate that relationship everything else suffers. My relationship with my wife, children, church people, neighbours and friends, who I am as a person, my integrity, everything suffers if I don’t maintain that relationship.
Every morning I wake up and there are a 1,000 things I have to accomplish, a dozen people who feel they need my time, a myriad of activities that cry out for my participation, a host of good things to do and accomplish. If I am not careful, these demands and activities will carry me away from the very thing that makes me the man that I am and the very source of my being and strength.
 
Jesus said, "Apart from me you can do nothing,¹" and that if we abide in Him we will bear much fruit.    He is the one who enables me to accomplish anything that matters and I cannot do it without Him. Therefore, the most important thing I will do in any given day is for me to spend time alone with God. 
  
This Pastor Rick’s Proverb reminds me to take care of the most important thing first. Remember, nothing you will do today is more important than spending time with God.

 
2. It’s not what happens to you but what happens in you that makes the difference.
Let me put it bluntly. Sometimes life sucks and kicks you in the gut. Bad things happen to good people. Life is made of such things.   Yesterday I read a blog post from a friend who just spent a month in Malawi with his family helping deeply impoverished people.   He said, "There are people here who appear to be completely trapped under the heavy weight of disadvantage, missed used opportunity, and marginalization." Life hurts not only where you are, but often much worse where others are.
Somehow we forget that this is not heaven. It is a fallen, corrupted, sinful, decaying earth. I hurt with hurting people every day, it’s the stuff of ministry.   Bad things happen to you not because God is punishing you, but because we live in a fallen world.   There are things that you cannot do anything about.   You can’t change that Uncle Harry molested you, that you were brought up in a poor home, that people have said nasty things about you and done nasty things to you.   You can’t help that your job was down sized or that the stock market tanked.
You can however, choose how you will respond to the bad things that have happened to you.   The difference is attitude.   Life had not been easy for me being brought up in a broken home and living with a stepfather who seemed to resent me, but when I was 12 years old I made a very distinct decision that I would be a happy person.   I made a choice.
Everyone has difficulties, trials and pain in their lives.   The difference is the attitude with which they face life.   It’s not what happens to you, it's what happens inside you, how you choose to respond that determines how high you’ll fly through life.   Your attitude determines your altitude.


3. Life is too short to carry a grudge.
In ministry and in life there are lots of people who will betray you, hurt you, and disappoint you.   If you choose to focus on the hurts and bear grudges you will find that those who hurt you or slighted you have long moved on and you are the one still suffering. When Jesus taught us to forgive unconditionally, He wasn’t doing it just for the sake of the offenders.   He knew that if you and I choose to bear grudges, we imprison ourselves.   We are to forgive others to set ourselves free.
Life is way to short to waste it holding on to the hurts and pains and the wounds selfishly inflicted on us by others.   Holding a grudge usually has little or no impact on the person with whom we hold the grudge but it eats away at our soul like a cancer and will destroy us.
Jesus wants you to live an abundant full life and that cannot include bearing a grudge or harbouring a hurt.   He said, "But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you."²
Do want to live a life full and abundant, or do you want to waste away holding on to that hurt?


4. Do right.
Short but yet such a powerful Pastor Rick Proverb.   Always do the right thing regardless of how you feel, regardless of whether others deserve it, regardless of what others think, regardless if you will be mis-understood, regardless of the cost.
Many times in ministry there have been times when I would like to have acted carnally. Times I would have liked, in the flesh, to put people in their place, to lash out and fight for my rights.   There have been times when I have been mis-understood, lied about, misrepresented and treated maliciously. You have too.
If I choose, by the power of the Spirit to always do the right thing, I will never have to regret anything I’ve done or said or any action I’ve taken. I will always know that I have acted in a way pleasing to God.   Life is greatly simplified when you simply choose to do what is right.
Jesus has called us to a whole new way of living and it is a life of obeying and honouring Him and Him alone.   We play to an audience of one, the Lord God of all heaven and earth. Someday I will stand before Him to give an account and the only thing that will matter is whether I’ve done what was right in His sight.

5. Be faithful.
I want to make a difference in the world. I want to accomplish great things. I want to change the world. I am a man passionate about what I do. I don’t know how to do anything half hearted. I work hard. I play hard. I pray hard. I try hard. I think it was Ignatius of Loyola who said, "Work as if everything depended on you, pray as if everything depended on God."
Yet, I find myself sometimes, perhaps often, down on myself because I have not accomplished more for Christ or that I wasn’t a better father or husband.   I started out to convert the world, but have often found the results less than I had hoped.   I beat myself up because Sunday’s sermon wasn’t what I had hoped it to be and people weren’t clamouring to get the MP3 or because someone points out that David Jeremiah or John MacArthur did such a superb job on the same passage on their broadcast.
My wife is the one that reminds me of this PPP.   I need to remember that God doesn’t call me to reach someone else’s potential or fulfill someone else's purpose.   He simply asks me, and He asks you, to be faithful to the assignment He has given us.   He does not ask us to be the brightest, the biggest or the best.   He asks us to be faithful.   A whole lot of stress is releaved when I just focus on being faithful to what He asks of me.
I have found these simple phrases powerful guide posts in my life helping me to remain positive and on track as I seek to be a dedicated follower of Jesus.   God bless you.  I hope they will be a help to you too.

1.. John 15:5

2.  Matthew 5:44