I went to the dermatologist concerning some places on my hands.  He told me those were only “mile markers.”  Life has a lot of mile markers.  A child starts to school; he finishes school; he gets married; he has children; he retires, and then finally, he dies.  All of these are mile markers of life.

The three most prominent mile markers of my life have been, getting married, becoming a parent, and being saved.  All of those have changed my life, but getting saved was the greatest change of all.

What are your mile markers?  Is being saved in there?

It is a common problem.  It’s usually not that others impose too many obligations on us, but instead we do it to ourselves.  A schedule for time is much like a budget for money.  We will either manage it, or it will manage us.  In both budgeting and scheduling we must include something for ourselves, and we must allow for the unexpected.

Recently, someone invited me to go to a revival meeting with them on a certain night.  I simply told them that I had a previous commitment.  I did.  It was to spend the evening at home with my family.  An elderly pastor told me, many years ago, “There’s always another visit to make, there’s always another need to be met; whatever you do, save some of your life for you and your family.  If you don’t, you will wish you had.”   I’ve tried to do that, and looking back, I’m glad I did.

There are many things that are very good in their proper parameters, but outside those parameters, those same things become very bad.  Fire is a wonderful thing in a fireplace, or on the eye of the stove, but when it’s coming out of the eves of the house, or sweeping through the forest, it is terrible.

God has made us to be sexual beings.    I have read that men have a sexual thought every few seconds.  I don’t know how often women think about it, but they can’t be very far behind,  judging from all the goings on in the world today.  Much like fire, and other things that could be used as examples, sex is a wonderful aspect of life when it is contained within God’s design.  When it goes beyond those boundaries, it becomes a destructive force.  God’s design is that sex is to be within the bounds of marriage.   Kept within those bounds, there would be no STDs, the divorce rate would fall to almost nothing, and abortion would be unheard of.

We are created in the image of God, and we do have the power of choice.  We are not driven by instinct, we have the power of decision making, and as Christians, we have the strengthening of the Holy Spirit, who lives within us.

The Bible says it is “the little foxes that spoil the vines,” meaning little things can do big damage.  I have gone for a few days with a crick in my neck.  I guess I slept wrong, but it each time I turn my head, it doesn’t fail to let me know it’s there.  And, who hasn’t suffered an ingrown toenail?  Those things can absolutely take the shine off your day.

It is the same way in the spiritual realm.  Something as simple as a wrong attitude can dull one’s spiritual senses and neutralize one’s power with God.  What are the little things in your life, that if corrected, would bring you into a greater spiritual experience?  Once you purposefully identify them, chances are you will find they are not worth what they are costing you.   Don’t make the mistake of allowing little foxes to destroy your vines!

That’s really a hard question, because if you’re like me, you think about a lot of things.  I will go for several days when cars are really on my mind; or motorcycles, boats, computers, or something else that I just happen to be thinking about a lot.  But there are some things that I just kind of always have running through my mind.  I’m almost always thinking of my family in one way or another.  I’m glad of that.  Without my family, I would not be who I am.  I don’t know who, or what, I would be.  I don’t ever want to find out.  Another thought, and even more foundational than other thoughts, is the thought of God in my life.  Not just an insurance policy to stay out of hell, but a friend that sticks closer than a brother, One who can meet all my needs according to His riches in glory.

I think about a lot of things.  I dwell on a lot of things and some very special people, but the Lord is the driving force in my life.  What do you think about most?