"I am living for _____."

So Kristen and I had an intriguing (and brief) conversation this morning as we were driving in the car with our 2 boys. We had just stopped into Starbucks on our way to the church, where Kristen and Owen and Baxter attend a Tuesday morning women’s Bible study called Wellspring (the boys, being boys, don’t attend…there is a nursery we like to call “Bible study”). Kristen had been the one to go inside to get our drinks (thank you disappointingly-finite gift card!), and she was now telling me about her experience. She made a comment about how interesting it is to see who visits Starbucks at 9:00am on a Tuesday morning (e.g., the post-school-drop-off Moms initiating their to-do list activities with a nice Starbucks treat), and then said, “I wish there could be some kind of ticker above everyone’s head, that says how often they come to Starbucks each week, and how much they spend on coffee, and what they are off to do that morning.” (We make these kinds of comments to each other often, especially when we are driving on the highway, wondering where everyone is going, and what they are doing, and what their story is.) The thought that popped into my mind right then arrested me because it was so challenging to me. I said to Kristen, “I wonder what it would be like if the ticker said, ‘Right now, I am living for _____’.” We kind of sat in silence for a few moments, then made a few comments about how convicting and challenging that is to us, and then I think Owen interjected an unrelated comment and we ended up wondering together about how often firefighters wash their fire trucks (and why).

But isn’t that a good challenge for us to consider? How would you finish that statement, right this very moment? “I am living for _____ right now.” How we fill in that blank cuts right to the heart of the matter. What is it that drives us? What fuels us? What is it that keeps us going? What or who are we living for? Are we ultimately living for ourselves, or for our Creator and Redeemer? This morning, my ticker would have run something like this: “Right now, I am living for the self-focused momentary physical pleasure of a tall Java Chip Frappucino and the anticipation of the satisfaction (however fleeting) of clearing my email inbox so that they are zero unread messages.” I honestly don’t think it went very far beyond that. I was living for myself. (Important nuance: it is not that we can’t thoroughly enjoy a Frappucino as a gracious gift from God and an incomparable but helpful glimmer of the goodness of His character, or that we can’t vigorously apply ourselves to the God-given tasks that we have, laboring diligently as unto Him and not unto men…that just wasn’t the posture of my heart this morning.)

Our merciful God tells us in His Word, in a rich variety of ways, how we should fill in that blank. “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31). We should be able to say, “Right now, I am living for the glory of God.” And if at any time or in the midst of any task we can’t say that, we should ask the Holy Spirit to convict us of our sin, we should turn to Jesus Christ in full repentance, and we should seek His grace and strength to change us and enable us to live for Him and not for ourselves. We should resolve, along with Jonathan Edwards, “never to do any manner of thing, whether in soul or body, less or more, but what tends to the glory of God; nor be, nor suffer [allow] it, if I can possibly avoid it.” Our times are in God’s hand (Psalm 31:15); we are not our own but have been bought with a price and so are to glorify God in our bodies (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). So, I urge you to ask yourself frequently, “What would my ticker say right now?” And allow God to do His mighty work on your heart and life.