It's been a rough few months for the church I work with. We've had over a dozen people pass away who have been members here or connected here in some way.

I've been to a lot of visitations in the last three months, and it's amazing what you hear both at the funerals and the visitations about the deceased. 

"He was a good man."

"She was one amazing woman."

"He sure did love his sports." 

I've heard predominately what the person loved. His or her family, their cars, their sports, both local and abroad. And that got me thinking. 

Ask this question: If someone were to say something about you at your funeral if you died today, what would it be? Would it be that you were a hardcore Tennessee Vols fan? Or that you lived and breathed baseball? Or that you really liked Star Trek?

What will people remember you by? Your hobbies? Or who you really were?

What will people say that mattered to you? 

As much as some of us hate to admit it, what we spend our time doing is what matters to us the most. You spend most of your time working? It isn't because you have to work, it's because that's what matters to you the most. Spend most of your time in hobbies or collecting? That's what matters to you the most. 

Time management is a scary thing. You only have 10,800 minutes a week to fit things in. That's everything - sleep, work, play, family, hobbies, eating - everything. The truth: What you spend your time on matters the most to you. 

Ecclesiastes 3 is the famous "There is a time for everything" passage, and it rings so true today, even though it was written over 2500 years ago. There is a time for everything.

There is a time when my little boy won't be a little boy anymore, so maybe I need to prioritize my time off from work and not be distracted when I'm with my family. Maybe I need to spend less time playing retro video games and more time playing with my young son. Maybe I need to focus on my wife instead of the thousand other things that I have to do - all of which will still be there for me to do tomorrow (Matthew 6.34). 

I spend way too much time obsessing about my time. Once it's gone though, we'll never get it back. So let's use our time wisely, and live in the moment. Because when we're gone and people are talking over our casket, we want them to say that we were Godly and that we loved our families more than anything. 

Men: ​

We have become a bunch of macho idiots. We have put girls in bikinis and idolized the beautiful ones and hated on the ones that don't meet society's definition of beauty. We have made sports more important than relationships - both with God and with others. We prioritize work and "getting ahead" more so than we prioritze our relationships with wives, husbands, sons, and daughters. We have set aside time for hobbies, movies, and video games - but not for family. We have degraded sex so much that it is now the equivalent of going to the mailbox. And we have done all this with a smile on our face and money in our bank accounts. 

It is time for us to be Gentlemen - gentle men.

</rant>​

Just a little excerpt from something I'm working on for our new guy's split class tomorrow. Harsh, but so true for most men. ​

Like Taft Ayers said in his tweet: Probably a good idea to watch this.​

In 1 Kings 3 we find a story of the beginning of King Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived. 

In chapter 3 verse 5 something happens that doesn't happen very often - God asks a man what he wants from Him. God literally asks Solomon in a dream, "Ask what I shall give you."

As I said, that doesn’t happen very much in scripture. Moses wasn’t given a choice to lead the Israelites out of Egypt - he was told by God how he was to do it. Even God’s own son, Jesus, wasn’t given a choice in the matter of his earthly death. Sure, Jesus was God on earth and could have called 10,000 angels to rescue him, but God’s plan was absolute and Jesus had no other viable choice - the Savior had to die for our sins on the cross. 

But Solomon was given a choice - and he chooses wisely. 

Selfishly, I know exactly what my first instinct would be to ask for: I would ask God for myself, my children, and my children's children to never have to worry about money. Ever. 

Solomon could have asked for that. He could have asked for power, or status, or riches, or long life, but he doesn't. He simply asks for wisdom to govern his nation - God's people - wisely. He asks for wisdom. 

Believe it or not, God gives you a choice every day. And in terms of serving Him, there's only two choices - we either do or we don't. God has given us the free will to choose what we do with our lives, and every day is an opportunity to show people who we serve. 

What choice are you making? Are you serving God with all your heart or are you serving him half-heartedly? Because there's really no in-between.

Albert Mohler has an excellent post on his site about Christian leaders who may be ignoring modern technology in their ministries. Very telling. ​

Leaders who talk about the real world as opposed to the digital world are making a mistake, a category error. While we are right to prioritize real face-to-face conversations and to find comfort and grounding in stable authorities like the printed book, the digital world is itself a real world, just real in a different way.

Real communication is happening in the digital world, on the Web, and on the smart phone in your pocket. Real information is being shared and globally disseminated, faster than ever before. Real conversations are taking place, through voice, words and images, connecting people and conversations all over the world.

If the leader is not leading in the digital world, his leadership is, by definition, limited to those who also ignore or neglect that world, and that population is shrinking every minute. The clock is ticking.

Article link ​→