Our church is going to week 5 of the 6-week “Rebuild” series tonight from the book of Nehemiah. Pastor Bumble will teach from Nehemiah 6:15-7:6, 66-73 on “Why ‘Completion’ is Not ‘Done’ in Rebuild”.
Tune in at 5 PM in person or online at bit.ly/rp_church or youtube.com/user/RedemptionPoint for the message then share what God’s teaching you and how you would respond with your friends.
From the text, Bumble differentiates the short-term and long-term work we need to set our eyes on.
What is your long-term goal, and how do your short-term goals contribute to what God calls you to do for eternity?
Please share your insights
My long term goal is to make disciples who make disciples, and my short term goal is to be more intentional in my conversations with others.
Long term goal is to try to share the gospel and to strengthen and help build the followers of Christ. Currently I am doing this by meeting up with others and serving in the college group at RP.
My short-term goal is to develop a good relationship with Ciara and help her with her baptism study. My long term goal is that I can bring more people to Christ. I am unsure of who God is calling me to bring to Him yet, but I hope I can help disciple more people in my lifetime and evangelize to more people.
From our group selection tonight
When I was young, I don’t think I have any long term goals. I have some short term goals and a vague notion of what might happen in the far off future. My goals were around my success at my profession and a vague notion of retiring comfortably some time way in the future. But as I get older, all those goals seem hollow and tiring and I felt empty and so my goals condensed to just one idea that I wanted to be happy. But I still had no idea of what being happy mean. Is it just being able to do whatever I want without worrying about working? Looking back, I don’t think I have any notion at all how to be happy so basically I had no goal at all. Then after my divorce, I was so lost and at that point, my only thought was to be at peace. But that’s not the peace (shalom) that God intended. At that time, being at peace for me just meant to not be sad…not to feel anything at all.
I’m so glad God has shown me a different way and I found my way back to Him. But I think my goals were still mostly short sighted when I first started to be opened to His Words. I know, intellectually, that if I look from the perspective of Eternity, then the goal is different than if I look at just my time on Earth but I’m still caught each moment worrying about the flesh and not the spirit.
Before I met Teri and the girls, I think my goals would have remained self centered and I think that I would have been even more likely to fall back to thinking selfishly about my own needs. But having to consider someone else beside myself let me step away from my own needs and see a bigger picture. Thank you my Father for giving me a different perspective to allow me to grow and be more like You.
I think parenthood must be one of the greatest gift that God can give to us – to give us a small notion of what it means to sacrifice for our children. To give us some insight to how the Father see us. How much He loves us and how easily He forgives our faults. I remember when my mom told me that my father can see no fault in his kids. I can see now that no matter how frustrating our children can be when they won’t obey us and continue to do the same dumb things no matter how many times we tell them otherwise, we still love them and want to protect them and want to sacrifice for them. Without being a parent, we can never see/understand God’s love for us.
So what are my short term goals now? I still want to work to give my family financial security and stability and I still want the kids to be educated and be prepared to face the world. This is a lesson from Nehemiah because we are creatures of flesh and we still need to meet those needs before we can look to our spiritual needs. But once the basic needs are secured, our ultimate peace will be achieved only in our relationship with the Father. And as with Nehemiah, we won’t forget our ultimate goal if we entwine our lives with the presence of God. We should check in with God in a continuous basis to make sure we haven’t gone astray. I think as much as the Father want to see us succeed on our own and make our own decisions, He sees our paths better than we do and He is always, as a loving parent, ready to nudge us along the proper path if we but reach out and ask for help.
Dear Father, please help me be a good provider for my family and to help me and my family to the ultimate goal of a stronger relationship with You so that we too can secure our name in the book of life and all be there at the end with You in Eternity.