Wednesday, May 18, 2011

The power of a moment


A spiritual leader makes an impassioned speech to ignite a nation, a disaster occurs, a nation declares war, a loved one dies, a person makes the momentous decision to forgive, you see someone across a crowed room and the world changes as you know it. The power of a moment to define everything so quickly, who we are, what we achieve and what our life becomes. Job 7:17 What is man, that you should magnify him? and that you should set your heart on him? 18 And that you should visit him every morning, and try him every moment? Gods so interested in you that he visits you every morning. Puts a different perspective on our mornings, makes you want to get into the habit of greeting the morning differently. Gods a morning person and his mornings are filled with renewal and unrealized potential. His Day is filled with thoughts and plans of you and those around you. God moments are carefully designed plans the seeds of the limitless potential of God for our lives. Imagine the Wright brothers, just two bicycle engineers who experienced a moment of genius, lets make a plane. This is the awe and creativity, the imagination of God that still visits people daily – (these are Gods mornings) Imagine the moment Alexander Fleming looked down a microscope and saw what mold could do to infection. This incredible moment lead to the development of a drug called penicillin that would save countless millions of lives. The world changed in that very moment. God is such a loving merciful God, we know this all to well but do we also know he is also a just God. The world including your world… is his intention (HIS preoccupation) and he loves the world too much to leave it the way it is. Our lives are the canvas on which God paints his masterpiece, everyday is a new moment to add another intentional brush stroke to change the stark canvas of our lives to the ever developing picture of life God see’s. One of the greatest acts of Gods loving kindness towards us, is not only his mercy toward us but also his judgments. He stands back and looks across the landscape of life and begins to paint our life with his colours. He colours his brush with opportunity, dips his brush with humility and with charity. He places his brush into the pigment of kindness and smears it across the canvas of out lives. He is the one making the judgments, positioning the right perspectives. Everyday God enters the studio of life and paints your life with purpose and prosperity. He is there each day looking to copy the perspective of eternity and super impose them onto the one dimensional realities of our mortality. He then meticulously judges the work of his hands upon our lives. One of the things we all often say is, don’t judge me. Such a sad statement when the judgments of God are beautiful moments of design that reflect his vision. So I say, judge me God, try me, test me out, paint my life with your moments of intention. What’s the power of a moment? If we submit to these God moments we can become all than God intends. Alternatively if we neglect to respond to the power of the God moments, we are maybe only one moment away from becoming less than God intended. I saw a documentary of a young man who tossed a rock from a hill over a freeway, he thought it might be funny. It smashed though a windscreen and disabled a beautiful young woman. The power of that moment that changed two peoples lives for ever. That young mans pain was defined in just one moment of time, just one thoughtless act changed his and the young woman's life forever. The interviewing journalist asked him, what had changed about his life. He said he takes more seriously the moments in his life now, he thinks through every impulse and action, every thought and heart attitude, ever hoping to make amends for his tragic decision. Every moment has the possibility to be a God moment of creative action and positive intention or a destructive moment of decay and decline. If you’ll allow good motives, God Moments to out shine the difficulty or the mundane, the misconceptions of your limitations, the boarders of what is, then in a heart beat everything can change for the better. You can be transformed to a better place a more meaningful purpose. God is there every moment of everyday to take you to that place of creation not of deconstruction, of hope not of despair, of action, never of inaction. 10 spies stood on the verge of history, but in just a moment of bad decision, a choice is made to see the situation in a particular way and that moment defined the future and sentenced 3 million people to death in a harsh wilderness. What’s the power of a moment, to define a life time? The person you marry, an indiscretion that costs a life time of suffering…or a life of someone else’s suffering. Each day we get up is a series of moments that can define or set the boundaries of our lives positively or negatively. There’s not only the sin of commotion - equally as devastating is the sin of omission….we can neglect to do what should be done. Be careful what comes out of your mouth it can define the very life force of a human destiny…in an ungraded moment. I heard a story of a young boy carrying a heavy bag home from school loaded with books. He tripped and fell under the weight of the books. Another boy from school recognised him and rushed to his aid. From then on they became friends right through their school years. It was only as the boy who stumbled was graduating as valedictorian and giving his speech in front of the entire school, that his friend who’d rushed to help him so many years earlier realized the power of that moment. For the first time he told how he’d cleared his locker that night of all his books, intending never to return to school, as he was going to take his own life. He’d been bullied mercilessly his entire school life and didn't have a single friend. That day he was threatened to be beaten the next morning, This was one to many times and he could no longer take the persecution, but his new found friendship finally gave him the courage to get though the challenge of one more day. The power of that moment. We all too often let these moments pass us by and we fail to see the opportunities for new life to emerge within the context of our life experience. Martin Luther King outlived himself because he refused to allow the time he was living in define the moments of his life. Sometimes unnoticed moments of our lives are defining us weather we realize it or not. The moment a woman with the issue of blood presses though the crowd. The moment blind Bartimaeus yells out to Jesus, in a chance encounter. The moment a woman with a demon possessed daughter argues with Jesus for healing. The moment of intention Zacchaeus climbs a tree to place himself above the crowd. There lives where defined by those moments. Paul’s in a storm aboard a ship and tells everyone to eat, if he hadn’t they’d never have made the long swim to shore when the ship hit a reef. A moment of wisdom defined the lives of everyone on that boat. Joseph in a dungeon shares the interpretation of a dream. 3 young men refuse to bow and a nations spirituality is defined in a single moment. The power of moments, you say something you didn’t really mean. You do something you didn’t really intend to do and in a heart beat your life is defined by the moment, you wish you could have back. An indiscretion with that person and your life now will be ever defined by it. You have a fight with your partner, your child observes and an impressionable life is defined by it. You say what your really thinking and crush somebody in the heat of an argument. Your offended by something that was a misconception and now your hurt is defining the majority of your life - the power of moments. The healing power of the moment you finally say, I was wrong. The season you pledge your love for better or worse. Don’t say those words at that moment unless you intend to live in that moment for ever. I wish I'd never married you and in that moment of frustration the rest of your life is defined in an instant. Forgiveness is sort and given but something may never be the same again. God is judging you on every ONE of these moments, he visits you every morning and judges you on every thought action and behavior. Why there’s so much at stake. 6000 years ago a young couple named Adam and Eve sold there birth rite in just a moment to a swindler named Lucifer for a few dollars, nothing more than a piece of fruit, they sold eternity for knowledge. Christ never confused the cheap resources of mortality for the great wealth of eternity. Don’t sell what is eternal for what is temporal (it’s a lousy trade) Ish 54: 7 it was only for a small moment I have I forsaken you; but with great mercies will I gather you. Don’t sell your eternal on the altar of opportunity. Abraham take your son and offer him as a sacrifice and God waited for a moment when his hand moved downward and that moment defined the future, the dream was secured God was satisfied with his faithfulness. How many times has God wanted to bless you, yet you have refused the moments or not know the moments. Your eternal sometimes waits on the Altar of the moment. The moment you say I love you, I forgive you, I feel called by you God, God if your there – help me. Jesus on a hill called Calvary willing submitted to a cross knowing there was a higher judgment than just the pain. He saw the Joy beyond the cross, the life giving force of reconciliation lay just beyond that moment and He was not about to miss the moment. Life is defined by eternity but it is packaged in little God moments that build the eternal or are left to rot in the inaction of personal desire and the temporal. Nelson Mandela describes the moment he decided to love and understand rather than hate and retaliate. What a moment that defined the future of a nation. He said I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul. Master the moments and captain your eternity.

2 comments:

  1. I love what you wrote! God Bless You

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    1. Appreciate the visit and the encouragment Seta, Blessings to you as well.

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