"Purpose and Meaning, But What About Initiative"

“Don't Leave Out Initiative”

When you consider the message that we receive from many quarters in western culture, and if you are like me, you feel bombarded with the notion that life has lost much of its meaning and purpose.  The message seems to be that we individually have no opportunity and that in order for us to know any success in life, we need the help of government.

However, such thinking diverts our attention from some vitally important things.  For people of faith it turns focus away from that fact that God is still on His throne and very much in charge of His followers.  Therefore, we as Christians need to hear His words as to the meaning of our lives and our eternal purposes.  For those with no faith life, it short circuits certain thought processes having to do with personal responsibility, opportunity, initiative, and genuine success (success as measured by one's own values).

A personal thought.  To be candid about it, I become comfortable in my life style.  There was little challenge and less initiative.  Then one day as I wrote in another blog, it came to me that we and especially we who know Christ are not disadvantaged by culture and country as much as we lack initiative to take it to life.  Man’s circumstance and situation can be overcome by Godly initiative and we who name Christ as Lord have certain responsibilities to lean forward.  We must live out genuine Godly initiative.

We do so not just in matters of faith but also in our personal lives, our economic lives, our relational lives, and in the living out of how we were designed, created, and gifted.  It is indeed a matter of personal responsibility which should bring each of us to contrition and humility.  And to the critic who sees this as some selfish personal thing, know that when one is blessed it is to be a blessing.  In other words one does well to see himself as a conduit through which others may be challenged and blessed and not the end point of such blessings.

As to the one who thinks the age of opportunity is now gone read on.

I recently heard the story of a young woman.  Hard times and failure had fallen upon her and yet it did not stamp out her initiative.  Some of her difficulties were of her making and in some she was a genuine victim (Note:  victim is a much over used term.  There are not as many as claim to be.  In most cases it is more convenient to claim victim than to seize the reigns of responsibility).  This young woman was horribly in debt, living on the beach and in her car.  She decided to began a business using a public payphone number for her contact point.  Within a year because of her initiative she was out of debt and had an income.  Today she presides over a very successful company.

Before you  dismiss this thought as an anomaly, consider that people who come to our country have not been influenced by impossibility messages that surround us and thus see the US as people have for two centuries, this indeed is the land of opportunity.  It is still possible through initiative and hard work to become successful, both in man’s eyes and more importantly in God’s eternal view.

The above observations, have great implications for our faith life.  If we do not exercise a sense of meaningfulness, purposefulness, and initiative in matters of faith, we will never rise to the level that God intended for us.  In addition we will never fulfill our Kingdom of Heaven responsiblilies.  None of us are only one in three billion.  Each one of us is uniquely endowed by our Creator for His great and eternal purposes!!!  However, understand this one thing.  

God is not sitting around Heaven waiting for any one of us to get underway but is moving forward with His great Kingdom of Heaven plan.  It will go forward with or without any one of us.