LIfe Achievements

I’ve been reading a devotion by Henry T. and Richard Blackaby, Experiencing God Day By Day.  One day’s devotion spoke of Moses’ security coming from his relationship with God.  There were two questions that were posed at the end of the devotion:  Would I be satisfied to have success, power, and wealth, but not a relationship with God?   Do I value God’s presence in my life more than the greatest achievements I could experience in the world?

Both questions were thought provoking but the second question was the one that really caught my attention.  What would be the greatest achievement that I could think of without God’s presence in my life?  To tell you the truth I couldn’t think of one thing that would fit the greatest achievement category.  There are plenty of things I’d like to do but they wouldn’t qualify as the greatest.  Have I given up dreaming altogether and why?  Is that normal?  Is that good?

But the first question is why I think I couldn’t think of a thing.  I can’t see anything worthwhile doing without my relationship with God.    Have you met someone who looks like they’ve got their act together and is a total success?  We may know someone personally or we’ve seen them on the news or read about them in a magazine or seen an article about them on the internet.  You know what?  Their lives aren’t any more perfect than yours.  When you really get to know them, they are human and flawed, just like you and me.  And they have major problems, just like you and me.  As I told a pastor one time that was concerned how he was perceived at a gathering of other ministry leaders, we all put our pants on one leg at a time.  No one is better than anyone else in God’s eyes because God knows us totally, warts and all, and He still loves us. (And that’s amazing!)

Without God, whatever I did wouldn’t be worth a hill of beans.  My achievements would be like the filthiest rags you could imagine.  And the saddest part would be, no matter how successful, my achievements wouldn’t satisfy the desires of my heart because they have nothing to do with my relationship with God.  What an empty life that would be.  And it doesn’t even consider the eternal consequences of that non-relationship.  

One of my favorite verses is Psalm 37:4, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart”.  I want God’s desires to become mine because I delight in Him.  If God decides that I need to do something great in my life He will give me the dreams and tools to accomplish it, not for my glory but for His.  

Ask yourself these two questions.  Would you be satisfied to have success, power, and wealth, but not a relationship with God?   Do you value God’s presence in your life more than the greatest achievements you could experience in the world?  The answers have eternal consequences.

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