Eternal Perspective

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about making better choices and how to live before God.  As I was pondering this idea, I started thinking about making choices that matter.  We often talk about making good choices and how to have a good life but what does that really look like?  We say in Christian circles that it isn't about the money or the car and all of that, but do we really mean it?  It becomes a different situation I think when someone offers you money to compromise your purpose in life.  Recently I watched the movie Courageous.  It's a really good movie and one of my favorite parts is the story of Javier.  During the movie we see Javier's difficulty in finding a job and his struggle with providing for his family.  Eventually he finds a job that has some consistency to it.  He's called into the office one day and he's offered a promotion with the condition that he do something for the manager that would compromise his integrity.  Can you imagine being in that situation?  Here you are struggling to put food on the table with the chance to do exactly that and do it well, but it would come at the cost of sacrificing your integrity.  You see it is easy to make the statement that money doesn't have a sway over you when you're not in a situation like this.

Money isn't the only thing that vies for our attention however.  In America, one of the most cherished things that we strive for is happiness.  Our interactions with others seem to always demonstrate that fact.  We put up walls and boundaries to ensure that we don't get hurt by someone else.  We protect that happiness with everything that we have and look at vulnerability as a weakness.  Is this really how God intended us to be?  To protect our happiness at the expense of those around us?  How is that we can justify this way of living?  We need a shift in perspective.  We're too focused on our present situation and how it can be improved, we keep forgetting that this is temporary, we don't have an eternal perspective.

What does it really mean to have an eternal perspective though?  My dad tosses that term around a lot.  I find that it means that the actions and choices we make here on Earth need to be made in a way that shows what we're really living for.  We are here to give glory to God and to tell others what He has done for us.  We are not here to make lots of money and have a nice house and a nice car; those things may happen, but they aren't our sole purpose in life.  You see those things aren't bad by themselves, but when they become the purpose for which we live, then we have missed out entirely on our real purpose.  To live with an eternal perspective is to seek to glorify God in all of your actions.  It is to live knowing that real rewards and treasures are only attainable by doing the will of God.  I've only begun to process this and to understand what it would look like to live like this, but I have realized that the things in this world that really matter  tend to deal with people.  Showing love to others and serving them is at the very center of the heart of God.  We need to move our perspective from one that focuses on our current situation to one that looks to eternity and the things that are on God's heart.  We need to stop worrying about how helping someone may harm us.  We need to move away from this safe and comfortable lifestyle and move into one that is as radical as Jesus.  We need to move away from living for this world and into a living with an eternal perspective.