Words of Wisdom and Reflections – Part 1

Sunday, August 24th, 2025

blog link https://www.otakada.org/words-of-wisdom-and-reflections-part-1/

Words of Wisdom & Reflections – Part 1

“A righteous man may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers him from them all.” (Psalm 34:19)

To be sure, the future was wrought with difficulty, trouble, mistakes, but I knew that He was the God of great patience, mercy, and forgiveness. As often as I messed up, He would forgive me and urge me forward. I knew it. I experienced it. He gave me strength and I was beginning to hear Him speak to me and restore my soul.
— Don Nori Sr., You Can Pray in Tongues 1

“You will have no test of faith that will not fit you to be a blessing if you are obedient to the Lord. I never had a trial but when I got out of the deep river I found some poor pilgrim on the bank that I was able to help by that very experience.”
— A.B. Simpson

“Praying for the poor, the brokenhearted, and the prisoners of darkness will not compromise our intimacy with our heavenly Father. Rather, God draws close to those who pray to be sent to the front lines to advance His purposes.”
— Joseph Mattera, Kingdom Revolution 2

“For the most part, we’ve had a theologically informed worldview that has seamlessly matched reality. But God has called us to that place of heavenly perspective, the Glory realm, and the reality of the supernatural in our daily lives. It’s a radical shift from an earthly perspective to a heavenly one.”

As God’s children, imago deo, made in His image and likeness as spiritual beings, we have similar faculties of mind, will, and emotion to the Father. Like begets like, so in truth, each one of us has the potential to walk, live, and have our being in the supernatural ways of God in order to fulfill our mission and very purpose for being here.
— Jeff Jansen, Glory Rising

“Regardless of the family you were born into, or the circumstances surrounding your birth, God had foreknowledge of your arrival long before your conception. There’s victory in knowing that your birth was not accidental, and that you have a specific purpose to fulfill during your lifetime.”
— Joseph W. Walker III, Life Between Sundays 1

“You see, if you think this way, every disaster gets turned in a new direction. Your crisis becomes your best opportunity…”

If your house burns down, you don’t despair. Instead, as soon as you can, you seize this opportunity to build a new and better house. If you get laid off from your job, you either find a better one, or you create a better one by going into business for yourself. Out of your crisis comes your opportunity.

If you call it an opportunity instead of buckling under the load of the words crisis or tragedy or disaster, then you can start taking advantage of what has happened. You stop thinking of yourself as somebody who lost a job and start thinking of this as the first time you have been set free from a job. Now you can do something new!

The rest of the world will continue to wallow in all those results of a crisis: fear, trauma, depression, despair, frustration, anxiety, loneliness, worry, hopelessness, a sense of abandonment, a sense of loss, a sense of death, an urgency for survival, abuse, crime, domestic violence, and substance abuse.

But not you, because you are not under the world’s system. You will rub shoulders all the time with people who are anxious and afraid. You will hear people express how lonely they feel, how they feel as if they are the only ones having such big problems. They will get more and more desperate, while you and everyone else who does it God’s way will be busy stepping up on top of your problems to get a better view. Once you really step up on them, you can see much farther than you could see before. The air is better up there.

Instead of worrying, rejoice: “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice!” (Phil. 4:4 NKJV). Do not throw away your confidence. He who began a good work in you will finish it. (Phil. 1:6).

You do not have to wait for Heaven. What you are going through right now is only a test. And, I promise you, there is an abundance of life after the test, right here on earth.
— Wisdom from Myles Munroe, Overcoming Crisis

“You will often hear it said that the words for crisis in Japanese and Chinese are the same as the word opportunity. There’s wonderful truth in that…”

When the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War II, it obliterated the city. Over a hundred thousand people are estimated to have been killed. The buildings were leveled. The soil was poisoned. But the Japanese people took hold of the hands that reached out to help them, and they worked day and night to rebuild their city and their country. You know what happened. Now they are number one in so many categories: their cars, their electronics, and a lot more.
— Excerpt from Overcoming Crisis

“All of us experience times of crisis. This is an opportune time for the small group or house church to get actively involved in practical ministry…”

When a storm brought a huge tree crashing down on their house roof, one family experienced God’s love in action through their small group. “Love started flowing our way the very next day…”
— Larry Kreider, House to House 1

“I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.”
— Mark Twain

⚒️ “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”
— Thomas Edison

“Because God made us managers from the beginning… when we mismanage, we lose. Whatever you mismanage, you start losing. Whatever you manage properly, you protect.”
— Myles Munroe

“Because God made us managers from the beginning, when He created Adam and Eve and placed them in the Garden of Eden, management (sometimes called stewardship) is a primary goal of the human race, whether people realize it or not. When we follow the Master Plan, we flourish. And, like Adam and Eve, when we mismanage, we lose. Although it has no effect on the management mandate of God whether we manage well or poorly, it does have an effect on how much of His Kingdom can express itself on earth.”

Let’s bring it home: when you keep coming to work late, you can lose your job. When you keep eating too much fat, you can lose your health. When you do not cultivate your friendships, they can die. If you do not keep on putting affection and respect into your marriage, it falls apart. Whatever you mismanage, you start losing. Whatever you manage properly, you protect.

Proper management is the correct use of something. To use something correctly implies that you will use it with integrity. You will not slip into dishonesty. If you are not supposed to use the copier at work, you will not make personal copies on it. You won’t even help yourself to a paper clip. That paper clip wasn’t given to you for your private use. It is somebody else’s property. I know it’s very small and that your boss won’t miss it, but if you are managing your work properly, you will not take it home.

Once you put it in your pocket without a twinge of conscience, then it is easier to graduate from a paper clip to a pencil to a stapler to a laptop computer. The principle is honesty, and that is more important than a paper clip.

Proper management is timely use of another person’s property. (And remember that even your own property doesn’t wholly belong to you.) That means you get your timing right. When the country has been plunged into economic uncertainty, you postpone remodeling your house. You change your vacation plans—unless you already live in Hawaii, you don’t buy your ticket to Maui yet. You pull back. You reassess. You reorganize. You figure out what your resources are, and then you proceed to use them wisely, timing your use of them based on what you can observe and on what the Spirit of God prompts you to do.
— Myles Munroe

“We live in a consumer-driven culture, and it is in a crisis all the time. The society around us is obsessed with things. People are perpetually tired and worn out, distracted and depressed, irritable and in a hurry. They suffer from stress-induced illnesses, and they treat each other poorly.”

The Kingdom of God is not like that in the least. The resources we need are supposed to come to us in the natural course of living our lives according to God’s design and intention. We do not seek the Kingdom of God because of its benefits, but its benefits come to us as we seek the Kingdom. The provisions and resources that we need are not meant to become the objects of our faith. They are meant to be the by-products of our faith.
— Excerpt from Overcoming Crisis

️ “Kingdom-dwellers have faith. Their faith grows as they exercise it daily. True Kingdom people do not treat their faith as a tool or a trick. When they exercise their faith, it is not like playing a slot machine, where if they somehow end up with the right combination of words and actions, they win. Rather, it is a relationship, albeit with an invisible King. This King of ours has communicated liberally with His people, especially through His written Word. He has displayed his laws and His principles and has made them accessible to all who have eyes to see and ears to hear.”

God’s Son, Jesus, came to preach the Kingdom of God. He did not confuse His listeners when He said: “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you” (Matt. 6:33 NKJV).

For a member of the family of the Kingdom, what was truly worth seeking? Only two things: the Kingdom itself and the righteousness that comes from God.

A Kingdom person does not live for a job. A Kingdom person does not live for a spouse. A Kingdom person does not live to gather blessings. Rather a Kingdom person lives to display the love of God to the society around him or her. A Kingdom person may revert to old habits of self-protection, but soon remembers that God wants to supply every need.

The King is both Father and Savior. He is omnipotent, which means “all-powerful.” He is omniscient, which means “all-knowing.” He is omnipresent, which means He is everywhere at the same time. Therefore, we can say with Paul, who wrote to the Roman Christians in their ongoing crisis situations:

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? [In other words, every crisis known to the world.] As it is written: ‘For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the [unconquerable, ever-present] love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:35–39).

Pay attention to the notes I added to these verses. For Kingdom people, these verses are important words. They express the message of this book—that there is no crisis too big for God. He will make sure that His people can conquer and overcome anything because His love is never overshadowed by any crisis.
— Myles Munroe

✨ “Now, as always, God discloses Himself to ‘babes’ and hides Himself in thick darkness from the wise and the prudent. We must simplify our approach to Him. We must strip down to essentials (and they will be found to be blessedly few). We must put away all effort to impress, and come with the guileless candor of childhood. If we do this, without doubt God will quickly respond.”
— A.W. Tozer

“Some people do not like change. But even those people realize that seasonal change has many benefits. They understand that the earth needs a rest between growing seasons. It needs to gather nutrients and become ready for the coming growing season. They understand that times of plenty, while they may be followed by times of lack, will be followed again in due time by more seasons of plenty. They appreciate the different kinds of beauty that accompany each of the seasons. God established the seasons of the year. He is the one who created climate differences. He made the tropics, and He made Antarctica. He made the oceans, and He made the mountains. He is the founding Father of seasonal change.”
— Excerpt from Overcoming Crisis

“Nothing is permanent except God and His promises. The leaves may fall from the trees, and the weather may change, but God never changes. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever (see Heb. 13:8).”

God, the Unchanging One, is the One who set up the ever-changing seasons of the earth and of our lives. And He knew what He was doing. For one thing, He wanted His people to understand that they do not need to worry about their lives. Whatever is happening is not permanent. God is in charge of all of the changes.

Therefore, it does not matter what is happening because it cannot last. There will be an end to every crisis.

It does not matter if what is happening seems good to you or if it seems bad because it will change eventually, and your God orchestrates the changing. Seasons are His way of guaranteeing improvement. This means that seasonal change is one of His most consistent ways of bringing hope. This means that you do not throw your hope away, even in the darkest season of your life.

After all, no matter how cold you get in the winter, you always know summer is coming. Likewise, when winter comes, you do not throw away your swim trunks. You know the summer will come around again. You know you will need those swim trunks—but when you jump in the water to go swimming, you will not need the long-sleeved pullover you may have been wearing in the middle of the winter.

In the same way, when a “wintery” economic season comes upon you, do not throw away your bank account, even if it seems useless. Leave some money in it to keep it open. Why? Because the season is coming when you will be able to add more money to it again.

Everything is seasonal, times of plenty and times of poverty. Winter never stays. Summer never stays, either.

Both employment and unemployment are seasonal. If you are unemployed, then a time of employment lies ahead. If this is the season for you to leave your job, then a better job is up ahead. You have got to close out one chapter in order to open up the next one. Most of the time, you have to get ready for a chapter that is bigger and better than the one before.

To everything there is a season. Times of crisis are temporary. This is good.
— Myles Munroe

Sunday, August 24th, 2025
https://www.otakada.org/words-of-wisdom-and-reflections-part-1

Words of Wisdom and Reflections – Part 1

A righteous man may have many troubles, but the Lord delivers him from them all
(Psalm 34:19).

To be sure, the future was wrought with difficulty, trouble, mistakes, but I knew that
He was the God of great patience, mercy, and forgiveness. As often as I messed up, He
would forgive me and urge me forward. I knew it. I experienced it. He gave me
strength and I was beginning to hear Him speak to me and restore my soul.
—Don Nori Sr., You Can Pray in Tongues 1

You will have no test of faith that will not fit you to be a blessing if you are obedient to
the Lord. I never had a trial but when I got out of the deep river I found some poor
pilgrim on the bank that I was able to help by that very experience.
—A.B. Simpson

Praying for the poor, the brokenhearted, and the prisoners of darkness will not
compromise our intimacy with our heavenly Father. Rather, God draws close to those
who pray to be sent to the front lines to advance His purposes.
—Joseph Mattera, Kingdom Revolution 2

For the most part, we’ve had a theologically informed worldview that has seamlessly
matched reality. But God has called us to that place of heavenly perspective, the Glory
realm, and the reality of the supernatural in our daily lives. It’s a radical shift from an
earthly perspective to a heavenly one.
As God’s children, imago deo , made in His image and likeness as spiritual beings, we
have similar faculties of mind, will, and emotion to the Father. Like begets like, so in
truth, each one of us has the potential to walk, live, and have our being in the
supernatural ways of God in order to fulfill our mission and very purpose for being
here.
—Jeff Jansen, Glory Rising

Regardless of the family you were born into, or the circumstances surrounding your
birth, God had foreknowledge of your arrival long before your conception. There’s
victory in knowing that your birth was not accidental, and that you have a specific
purpose to fulfill during your lifetime.
—Joseph W. Walker III, Life Between Sundays 1

YOU see, if you think this way, every disaster gets turned in a new direction.
Your crisis becomes your best opportunity. If your house burns down, you
don’t despair. Instead, as soon as you can, you seize this opportunity to
build a new and better house. If you get laid off from your job, you either
find a better one, or you create a better one by going into business for yourself. Out of
your crisis comes your opportunity.
If you call it an opportunity instead of buckling under the load of the words crisis or
tragedy or disaster , then you can start taking advantage of what has happened. You
stop thinking of yourself as somebody who lost a job and start thinking of this as the
first time you have been set free from a job. Now you can do something new!
The rest of the world will continue to wallow in all those results of a crisis: fear,
trauma, depression, despair, frustration, anxiety, loneliness, worry, hopelessness, a
sense of abandonment, a sense of loss, a sense of death, an urgency for survival, abuse,
crime, domestic violence, and substance abuse.
But not you, because you are not under the world’s system. You will rub shoulders all
the time with people who are anxious and afraid. You will hear people express how
lonely they feel, how they feel as if they are the only ones having such big problems.
They will get more and more desperate, while you and everyone else who does it God’s
way will be busy stepping up on top of your problems to get a better view. Once you
really step up on them, you can see much farther than you could see before. The air is
better up there.
Instead of worrying, rejoice. “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice!”
(Phil. 4:4 NKJV). Do not throw away your confidence. He who began a good work in
you will finish it. (See Philippians 1:6.) You do not have to wait for Heaven. What you
are going through right now is only a test. And, I promise you, there is an abundance of
life after the test, right here on earth. Wisdom from Myles Monroe

You will often hear it said that the words for crisis in Japanese and Chinese are the
same as the word opportunity . There’s wonderful truth in that. You wouldn’t think that
those two words have anything in common until you realize that the seeming defeat
inherent in every crisis holds the keys to an unanticipated victory. When the atomic
bomb was dropped on Hiroshima at the end of World War II, it obliterated the city.
Over a hundred thousand people are estimated to have been killed. The buildings were
leveled. The soil was poisoned. But the Japanese people took hold of the hands that
reached out to help them, and they worked day and night to rebuild their city and their
country. You know what happened. Now they are number one in so many categories:
their cars, their electronics, and a lot more.
(Excerpts from Overcoming Crisis )

All of us experience times of crisis. This is an opportune time for the small group or
house church to get actively involved in practical ministry…. When a storm brought a
huge tree crashing down on their house roof, one family experienced God’s love in
action through their small group. “Love started flowing our way the very next day….”
—Larry Kreider, House to House 1

I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.
—Mark Twain

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like
work.
—Thomas Edison

BECAUSE God made us managers from the beginning, when He created Adam
and Eve and placed them in the Garden of Eden, management (sometimes
called stewardship) is a primary goal of the human race, whether people
realize it or not. When we follow the Master Plan, we flourish. And, like
Adam and Eve, when we mismanage, we lose. Although it has no effect on the
management mandate of God whether we manage well or poorly, it does have an effect
on how much of His Kingdom can express itself on earth.
Let’s bring it home: when you keep coming to work late, you can lose your job.
When you keep eating too much fat, you can lose your health. When you do not
cultivate your friendships, they can die. If you do not keep on putting affection and
respect into your marriage, it falls apart. Whatever you mismanage, you start losing.
Whatever you manage properly, you protect.
Proper management is the correct use of something. To use something correctly
implies that you will use it with integrity. You will not slip into dishonesty. If you are
not supposed to use the copier at work, you will not make personal copies on it. You
won’t even help yourself to a paper clip. That paper clip wasn’t given to you for your
private use. It is somebody else’s property. I know it’s very small and that your boss
won’t miss it, but if you are managing your work properly, you will not take it home.
Once you put it in your pocket without a twinge of conscience, then it is easier to
graduate from a paper clip to a pencil to a stapler to a laptop computer. The principle
is honesty, and that is more important than a paper clip.
Proper management is timely use of another person’s property. (And remember that
even your own property doesn’t wholly belong to you.) That means you get your timing
right. When the country has been plunged into economic uncertainty, you postpone
remodeling your house. You change your vacation plans—unless you already live in
Hawaii, you don’t buy your ticket to Maui yet. You pull back. You reassess. You
reorganize. You figure out what your resources are, and then you proceed to use themwisely, timing your use of them based on what you can observe and on what the Spirit of God prompts you to do.
Myles Monroe

We live in a consumer-driven culture, and it is in a crisis all the time. The society
around us is obsessed with things . People are perpetually tired and worn out, distracted and depressed, irritable and in a hurry. They suffer from stress-induced illnesses, and they treat each other poorly.
The Kingdom of God is not like that in the least. The resources we need are supposed to come to us in the natural course of living our lives according to God’s design and
intention. We do not seek the Kingdom of God because of its benefits, but its benefits
come to us as we seek the Kingdom. The provisions and resources that we need are not meant to become the objects of our faith. They are meant to be the by-products of our faith.
(Excerpts from Overcoming Crisis )

KINGDOM-DWELLERS have faith. Their faith grows as they exercise it daily.
True Kingdom people do not treat their faith as a tool or a trick. When they
exercise their faith, it is not like playing a slot machine, where if they
somehow end up with the right combination of words and actions, they win.
Rather, it is a relationship, albeit with an invisible King. This King of ours has
communicated liberally with His people, especially through His written Word. He has
displayed his laws and His principles and has made them accessible to all who have
eyes to see and ears to hear.
God’s Son, Jesus, came to preach the Kingdom of God. He did not confuse His
listeners when He said, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all
these things shall be added to you” (Matt. 6:33 NKJV). For a member of the family of
the Kingdom, what was truly worth seeking? Only two things: the Kingdom itself and
the righteousness that comes from God.
A Kingdom person does not live for a job. A Kingdom person does not live for a
spouse. A Kingdom person does not live to gather blessings. Rather a Kingdom person
lives to display the love of God to the society around him or her. A Kingdom person
may revert to old habits of self-protection, but soon remembers that God wants to
supply every need.
The King is both Father and Savior. He is omnipotent, which means “all-powerful.”
He is omniscient, which means “all-knowing.” He is omnipresent, which means He is
everywhere at the same time. Therefore, we can say with Paul, who wrote to the
Roman Christians in their ongoing crisis situations:
Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or
danger or sword? [In other words, every crisis known to the world.] As it is written: “For your sake we face death all
day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered”
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us . [We are overcomers.] For I am
convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the [unconquerable, ever-
present] love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:35-39).
Pay attention to the notes I added to these verses. For Kingdom people, these verses
are important words. They express the message of this book—that there is no crisis too
big for God. He will make sure that His people can conquer and overcome anything
because His love is never overshadowed by any crisis. Myles Monroe

Now, as always, God discloses Himself to “babes” and hides Himself in thick
darkness from the wise and the prudent. We must simplify our approach to Him. We
must strip down to essentials (and they will be found to be blessedly few). We must put
away all effort to impress, and come with the guileless candor of childhood. If we do
this, without doubt God will quickly respond.
—A.W. Tozer

Some people do not like change. But even those people realize that seasonal change has many benefits. They understand that the earth needs a rest between growing seasons. It needs to gather nutrients and become ready for the coming growing season. They understand that times of plenty, while they may be followed by times of lack, will be followed again in due time by more seasons of plenty. They appreciate the different kinds of beauty that accompany each of the seasons.
God established the seasons of the year. He is the one who created climate differences.
He made the tropics, and He made Antarctica. He made the oceans, and He made the
mountains. He is the founding Father of seasonal change.
(Excerpts from Overcoming Crisis )

NOTHING is permanent except God and His promises . The leaves may fall
from the trees, and the weather may change, but God never changes. He is
the same yesterday, today, and forever (see Heb. 13:8).
God, the Unchanging One, is the One who set up the ever-changing
seasons of the earth and of our lives. And He knew what He was doing. For one thing, He wanted His people to understand that they do not need to worry about their lives.
Whatever is happening is not permanent. God is in charge of all of the changes.
Therefore, it does not matter what is happening because it cannot last. There will be an end to every crisis.
It does not matter if what is happening seems good to you or if it seems bad because it will change eventually, and your God orchestrates the changing. Seasons are His way of guaranteeing improvement. This means that seasonal change is one of His most consistent ways of bringing hope . This means that you do not throw your hope away, even in the darkest season of your life. After all, no matter how cold you get in the winter, you always know summer is coming. Likewise, when winter comes, you do not throw away your swim trunks. You know the summer will come around again. You
know you will need those swim trunks—but when you jump in the water to go
swimming, you will not need the long-sleeved pullover you may have been wearing in the middle of the winter.
In the same way, when a “wintery” economic season comes upon you, do not throw away your bank account, even if it seems useless. Leave some money in it to keep it open. Why? Because the season is coming when you will be able to add more money to it again. Everything is seasonal, times of plenty and times of poverty. Winter never stays. Summer never stays, either.
Both employment and unemployment are seasonal. If you are unemployed, then a time of employment lies ahead. If this is the season for you to leave your job, then a better job is up ahead. You have got to close out one chapter in order to open up thenext one. Most of the time, you have to get ready for a chapter that is bigger and better than the one before.
To everything there is a season. Times of crisis are temporary. This is good. Myles Monroe

IT is good to know the Seed Principle when we pray for something and His
answer does not seem to resemble what we prayed for. We know God does not
make mistakes. Could it be that He has supplied us with the seed we need?
Could it be that we need to patiently tend the seed until it reproduces? Could
some kind of grinding (in the form of crises) be involved in the process of producing, at long last, the thing you prayed for?
You prayed for money, and He gave you a job. Well, there you go; your hard work is
the cultivation process. You will reap the money you prayed for. You prayed for the harvest, the end product. That is not a bad thing to pray for. But do not be surprised when the answer you get is in the form of harvest-producing seed. God may deploy you to sow some seed and to take care of it until it grows up. Then you can have your harvest, and with it comes the idea of sowing some more seed.
You prayed that you would be a true citizen of the Kingdom. Instead of transforming you instantly into a fully mature believer, He just sent you a crisis. What is happening?
Out of the midst of the fire, He intends to purify you. He wants you to come out shinyband strong, so that you can, like a true citizen of the Kingdom, reproduce Kingdom life generously.
God does not give you ready-to-eat bread. He gives you seed. This shows that He is a wise Father. You know as well as I do what happens when we just give a handout of bread to a beggar. It may take care of him for one day, but what about tomorrow?
Once he eats the bread, he is back to begging for more. Far better to help that beggar earn a living so he can acquire his own bread. It may take quite awhile, but it will be a better result.
Do not allow it to remain a mere seed. It is important for you to find it, plant it, and nurture it to maturity. Assuming that you do this, your seed will multiply greatly. Myles Monroe

YOUR work is what you were born to do. No kind of educational system can
teach you your true work because it is your life purpose, and it is revealed
by your God-given gifts. No employer on earth can take that away from
you. Nobody can fire you from that. They can lay you off from a job, but
they cannot lay you off from being yourself. When you leave a job, you take your work, which is your innate purpose, with you. Wherever you land, you can plant your giftedness so that it can start to grow again. You are much more than your job.
We all need to think about our jobs, and we need to put effort into satisfying the
requirements of our jobs. But we also need to think about our true work, our purpose in life, our God-given assignment. Whether you are currently job-hunting or happily employed, you should spend just as much time trying to find yourself as you spendbtrying to find a job or satisfy the people you work for. Shift your thinking. If you can find yourself , you will gain a new perspective on what you were created to do on this
earth.
You were not created to punch a time clock. That’s just what you may happen to be doing at the beginning and end of your workdays. You were created to contribute to the great bringing-in of the Kingdom of God. The King created you, and the King called you. He gave you special gifts that match with His purpose for your life. He wants you to discover that purpose so that you can fulfill it.
Fulfilling your God-given purpose can happen wherever you go. By God’s grace, you can do your work even if you are “out of work” at the moment. God likes to move
people around. He makes sure that He has representatives in many places, and that includes as many workplaces and job categories as possible, including the
“unemployed” category. Your work is ongoing, throughout your life on this planet.
Your job is only your career. It is temporary. You can lose it. Your whole career can collapse. You can also have more than one career in your lifetime. But your work isbyour life assignment. You cannot lose that. Yes, you can let it languish, unexplored anduntried, but you cannot lose the assignment you were born with. You cannot be deprived of your innate gifts and life purpose even if you are deprived of a paying job for a long time. Myles Monroe

Twentieth-century man needs to be reminded at times that work is not the result of thebFall. Man was made to work, because the God who made him was a “working God.”
Man was made to be creative, with his mind and his hands. Work is part of the dignity
of his existence.
—Sinclair Ferguson2

You were created to be deployed. You were created to serve the world around you with Kingdom compassion and Kingdom energy. The Kingdom of God is characterized by a culture of servanthood, and Jesus is the foremost example of this kind of servanthood.
He both modeled it and taught it. He explained to His disciples that they should not look for status or high position and that they should not lord it over other people, but rather serve others.
(Excerpts from Overcoming Crisis )

IN Jesus’ words, “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your
servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave.” Someone who is
“first” is the first one whom people call on when they have a need. A person
who is “great” may or may not hold a political office or some worldly
leadership position, but that person is seen as hardworking and dependable.
Are people always asking you for help? If so, you should take it as a good sign that
you are reflecting the character of your King. If not, it may be time to take a close look at your attitude, your work habits, and your motivations. Maybe people can tell that you are not inclined to serve and that, in fact, you are rather self-focused. Maybe they can tell that instead of reaching out to others, you tend to hold back or even to demand services from them.
What is another way that you can be sure that you are reflecting the King’s character and that you have a true heart of service? Look at your attitude toward work. Do you shoulder your share of the work without murmuring or complaining? If so, then you have probably already been deployed in the service of the King. You probably already know that being a servant is not a bad thing. Far from indicating that you are merely subservient, finding joy in your work indicates that you have found your God-given giftb(or gifts) and that you are willing to share what He has given you with the world around you.
And that alone is enough to make you “great” in the Kingdom of God.
The Kingdom of God operates in a most unique way. It is the only kingdom
anywhere that designates every single citizen as a king in his or her own right. You are a king, and I am a king. The person who sat next to you at last week’s worship service is a king, too.
This is a high privilege and an honor. Being a king also carries with it a built-in
expectation that you and I will spend all of the days of our lives serving. We are servant kings. We work our way up the Kingdom management ladder by working our way down in lowly service. We are kings who serve the world with our God-given gifts. Myles Monroe

You don’t have to serve God long to be tempted to think your work is in vain. Thoughts come that your service is a waste of time. Results are hard to find. Regardless of what you think and see, God promises that your work is never in vain (1 Corinthians 15:58).
That doesn’t mean you’ll ever see all the fruit of your labors you’d hope for, or that you won’t frequently feel nothing has come of all your efforts. But it does mean that even if you can’t see proof, your service to God is never in vain.
—Donald Whitney, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life 1

When I went to New York, I had nothing; nothing, that is, except a willingness to obey God and go. I obeyed though I had nothing. I have watched over the years as God has faithfully blessed every new step that I have taken…. Now, we’re purchasing an entire city block that encompasses five office buildings…. I took a measure of faith 20 yearsbago to step out and buy that building when we had only $98.16. It’s the same today; it still takes faith to step out [to serve].
—Bill Wilson, Christianity in the Crosshairs 2

IF you conducted a sidewalk poll in any city, anywhere in the world, and asked
people, “What is the key to life?” you would get many different answers. Some
would say the key to life is to make as much money as you can, as quickly as
you can, and to hold onto it as long as you can. Others would see gaining
political power and influence as the key to life. Love would be the key for many.
Then there are always those who would say that there is no key to life. Life is an
accident; it just happened and therefore has no key or significance. The fact is, most people don’t know the key to life. This is why so many people live tragic lives; they don’t know why they are here. They haven’t a clue about how to make their time on this earth count for something worthwhile. Their existence is, in many ways, a kind of “living death” because a life without purpose is not really a life at all.

So what is the key to life? Finding your true purpose and living it. I know the word purpose has been almost over-used in recent years, and many think they understand it, but I wish to advise that this most essential component in life has never and can never be exhausted. Let me sum this up in four statements that all relate to purpose—four “keys” to understanding the difference between a purpose-filled life and a life with no meaning. The greatest tragedy in life is not death, but life without a purpose. Many people
today are obsessed with finding ways to prolong their lives. They are so caught up with trying to live longer that they never stop to consider why they are living at all. Drifting from one day to the next without purpose, with untapped potential and unfulfilled dreams; this is for many a fate worse than death. The rising suicide rate in modern society bears this truth out. Many people, bereft of hope, take their own lives because they find death more appealing than continuing what is to them a meaningless existence. Finding our purpose in life is critically important. Myles Monroe

Points to Ponder
“What is the key to life?”
Is love the key?
Is life just an accident?
Is your existence a kind of “living death”?
Finding your true purpose and living it is the key to life.
The greatest tragedy in life is not death, but life without purpose.

———

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Shalom!

Ambassador Monday O. Ogbe

God’s Eagle Ministries GEMs