Ryan's Journal

It's an interesting thought that you can't take any thing into heaven, but also that you can't take whatever sinful attitudes or dispositions you may have into heaven either. If being in the presence of God is to be truly holy at last, then bitterness, self-pity, and the like shouldn't be part of our lives here - we can't take it with no matter how rightly we feel we deserve it, and the time and energies we waste could have been employed in some heaven-treasuring way.

And yet, motivating as the thought is, no amount of motivational speech on priorities, purity, or holiness can make us turn our thoughts, reactions, and perceptions to a heavenly view. Little blurbs of insight and wisdom provide knowledge, but empowerment to live out that wisdom can only come from God.

Where does that power come from? Prayer, reading the Bible, worship. Conversing with God, listening to God, speaking to God. A right relationship. It always comes back to the relationship.

Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, NIV

I'm trying to set goals for my life now, but there is only one overarching goal - to say with Paul:

What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ -- the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

Philippians 3:8-11, NIV

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