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Make it Count

This past Sunday, we were encouraged to put "our days and energy on Jesus." Pastor gave a powerful message about how real love is shown through sacrifice. Our ultimate example of love and sacrifice is Jesus' voluntary choice to die on the cross for us. We can show God our love for Him by making our lives a living sacrifice. (Romans 12:1) This sacrifice can be through giving our offerings, volunteering in church, or as simple as praising Him. Pastor reminded us of our goal this year in Psalm 90:12, to number our days. He encouraged us to plan out our months and days so that we have a viable plan for living a life of sacrifice to God.

I loved that we discussed this passage because I had just studied Psalm 90 and had jotted some notes down. When I read this chapter, I was struck by the message of restoration. The passage tells us to number our days because our lives are so short. Not only are they short, they are spent laboring and in sorrow. Recognizing how short our time is on Earth, the psalmist asks the Lord to be merciful so that we can be glad and rejoice in the rest of our days. Verse 15 says, "Make us glad according to the days wherein thou hast afflicted us, and the years wherein we have seen evil." What a bold prayer! To ask that the years ahead of us not only be better, but compensate for the years behind us.

The psalmist didn't stop there though. Just like what I wrote earlier, the psalmist basically prayed - let my latter days be blessed and therefore become a testimony to God. (Verses 16-17)

Lord, let our lives and how you've blessed us be a testimony to all God's people and our future generation. Make us radiate in the beauty of God. Lord make us attractive. Let all who see it seek after this same beauty and find You. Make the work that we do be strong and lasting and blessed. Let all who see it seek to find a talent such as ours and find You.

Psalm 90 is so good and is such an encouragement to make our days count. Focusing on loving God and loving people will align our lives with His perfect plan and will make our calendar days more meaningful and worthwhile.
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I've been pondering over Ecclesiastes a lot as I wrote this. It's one of my favorite books to dig into because of the writing style. It's totally written for a philosopher at heart. Ecclesiastes looks at our struggles and our efforts to make meaning out of our lives. It looks at how even with wisdom, the world won't always make sense. Just like the psalmist in Psalm 90, the author of Ecclesiastes sees how fleeting our lives are and asks, what's the point of our efforts when we all face the same evil called death? However, the author comes to the "conclusion" that the one true thing that matters is to "fear God, and keep His commandments" because God will judge what we have done with our time. There is so much more to pull out from Ecclesiastes that ties into this message of numbering our days, but I don't want to do it an injustice by not taking more time to dive deep. Seeing this connection though makes me very excited to get to the next two books of the Bible!

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