First Things First For Living An Intentional Life!
Matthew 22:37-40 You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and foremost commandment. The second is like it, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.
My Rabbi (though he may not KNOW I have possessed him, so Sshh), Rabbi Michael Vowell of Beth El Shalom, Sugarland, TX, (fyi: one could very easily find him at Beth El Shalom – Home|FAcebook) wrote a blog last week about rituals and their usefulness to a peaceful, successful life.
So, I’ve been thinking…
I agree totally with his take on the usefulness of rituals and the necessity of order, beginning with the first moment of any day.
But I also see that rituals are a staple of life here on earth. Creation itself has rituals to sustain creation. Planting, growing, blooming, producing, dying, fueling more creation. Mankind is different than all other created beings in that we can and do CHOOSE, PLAN and ACT UPON the rituals we attach ourselves to. However, even though we have this freedom and authority to choose, plan, and act upon them, rituals seem to be a mandatory occurrence in every life. We call them habits… patterns of behavior… or OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder)… but non-the-less, rituals can be found in every life from newborn to death.
OK! So I drew this WHOLE CIRCLE to walk back to my main point.
Rabbi Michael starts out his day with his “Morning Ritual”. Mine certainly cannot even begin to compare to his well thought out and maintained day. In fact, I can’t get past morning until I spend a little time understanding WAKING UP to me!
First Things First!
Side by side, hand in hand with myself (see the encouragement factor in that phrase?), as I was considering the rituals I could put into my life, I realized, there were just a few I would need to do away with, or at least put in a different position in my day, because SOME of my rituals were set in place simply to STOP AT ALL COST those that would require strength training! Others, though meant to be helpful, had the unintentional fruit of failure to live AN INTENTIONAL LIFE.
So, to say the least, this week has been filled with self meetings, to gather info and statistics about myself, to take before the committee which would write the report to take before the CPAU committee (the CHOOSE, PLAN, ACT UPON committee). To begin the business of moving toward… An Intentional Life…
Joshua 24:15 If it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve: whether the gods which your fathers served which were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord .”
And the people answered…
The people answered and said, “Far be it from us that we should forsake the Lord to serve other gods; (Joshua 24:16)
My “normal” rituals want to serve God, but like Paul, I am doing the very thing I do not want (Romans 7:20). For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members. (Romans 7:22-23)
I had to confess to my self committee that the simplest act of my morning, like putting my feet on the floor, lead me on to the mundane. And the mundane lead me on to the thought-LESS, and the thought-LESS lead me into meaning-LESS.
And meaning-LESS, though VERY PEACEFUL, does NOT produce meaningful service… to God or anyone else… not even to myself. I find that there is very little chaos, however it is filled and overflowing with the fruit called BOREDOM!
I desire an INTENTIONAL LIFE! I crave an INTENTIONAL LIFE!
Therefore…
Before my foot hits the floor in the morning, instead of a “Morning Ritual”, I MUST HAVE my “FIRST THINGS FIRST Ritual”!
And God, not myself, must be the OWNER, the DIRECTOR, the GUARDIAN, the HELPER, the EVERYONE necessary for the business of my Intentional Life.
Yesterday I wrote my “First Things First”, before my feet hit the floor, ritual prayer of my day. It began with Joshua, to choose whom I will serve. However, as I entered God’s Throne Room this morning, I realized MY choice is not the fundamental core of an Intentional Life, nor is MY service.
Can you guess what is? Can you guess what is at the VERY CORE of living a life of INTENTIONALLY walking, talking, doing, and being?
First Things First… You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.
Then, with all GOOD and RIGHTEOUS intentions you can and may intentionally choose, plan, and act upon, loving your neighbor as yourself.
We are experts at “loving” ourselves (although I believe I never did that even close to righteous, until Jesus “sought me and bought me with His Will”) if the definition of love is everything our heart desires.
But love is…patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (1 Corinthians 13:4-8)
GOD IS LOVE! and Love never fails;
If I intentionally pursue Him, He will TRAIN me to love! He, your Teacher will no longer hide Himself, but your eyes will behold your Teacher. Your ears will hear a word behind you, “ This is the way, walk in it,” whenever you turn to the right or to the left. Isaiah 30:20-21
I have indeed, as day 2 begins, already written an addendum to my FIRST, First Things First ritual prayer.
I choose to and I shall… love the LORD my God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.
It’s how Sshh (and its blogger), rocks and rolls into an Intentional Life!
**All Scripture quoted comes from the “Bible Gateway” app and is the NASB version of the Bible unless otherwise noted.