Imagine being so responsive to Jesus that you could say to others, “Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me — put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.” Those are the words of the Apostle Paul in Philippians 4:9 (NIV). Clearly, he understood that Christ had transformed his life and with all his heart he sought to walk with Jesus. So with him as our example, let’s listen to him tell us what his life was all about. He tells us in Acts 20:24 (NIV)
“…I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me — the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace.”
When we talk about “our life” it seems to me we are referring to the sum of our interests — the kinds of things we routinely think about especially when we don’t have anything in particular requiring our attention. That comprises what each one of us could call “my life.” And so with the apostle Paul. However, he was so caught up with the bigger picture of what Jesus had called him to do that all of his other interests in life were made subservient to this one interest. Comparatively speaking, such things were worth nothing to him.
“My only aim,” he writes, "is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me — the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace.”
So here we have a purpose for our lives that we can readily adopt as our own. It’s not a lifestyle change so much as a change in our hierarchy of values and in our main motive for all we do.
If we are going to follow the apostle’s example then we commit all our interests to God and consider them nothing to us insofar as they would interfere with finishing the race and completing our task. Then, in all we do day by day, we make it our chief preoccupation — our dominant motive — to testify to the good news of God's grace.
What is God’s grace? It is the good news of what God has done and is doing to freely flood every human heart with all that will bring endless delight. And to be called to be a coworker with God in such a joyful adventure is well worth all our attention behind the scenes of our everyday life.
