It Starts Small

When you get up in the morning, what is your intention for the day?

Intention is a thing intended; an aim or plan. This word and thought of intention has come up many times over the last few weeks. It has challenged me to ask that question: am I intentionally living, and if I am, what am I intentionally living for, or who?

What are the goals in your life?
What is your ambition set on?

When we act with intention, live with intention, we act with purpose and deliberately make decisions to move us towards that set goal or ambition.

Where is God in the middle of your ambition and goals?

One of my cornerstone verses is:

⁵ Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. Deuteronomy 6:5

When we think about living intentional, we need to look at if we are living intentional for God. This verse, says love me first and always. Love me in your heart, your mind and with all you have. I believe this is God’s ultimate purpose for our lives. To just simply love Him. God continues:

⁵ Only carefully obey the command and instruction that Moses the Lord’s servant gave you: to love the Lord your God, walk in all his ways, keep his commands, be loyal to him, and serve him with all your heart and all your soul.” Joshua 22:5

Again, our purpose and how we are to live is spelled out right here:

Walk in His ways
Obey His commands
Make Him the Master of your Life
Choose Him first over everything else
Serve Him with your heart and mind

We must have our heart and mind set on these things, but what does that look like or mean?

This is going to look different to each person. GOd made us unique and has given us all different opportunities in life, but the one thing that is consistent, is a dose of reality. We need to get very familiar with ourselves. We need to sit with Jesus and get cozy with who we are. We need that deep hard look into our hearts and discover who we are.

This is not a once a 5 year thing. This is a daily look into ourselves. Creating an intentional life involves self-reflection. It involves focus. It involves an honest introspection.

² Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God. Romans 12:12

The world’s intentionality is centered on the strategies of changing your attitude, finding happiness, thinking positive and anything self-focused. Am I talking in circles? I know, I just said that we need introspection and focus. Look inside your heart is not a bad thing, but where and who you place your focus is the heart of the issue.

God wants us to stay away from selfishness and pride. The heart of pride is trying to live life your own way for your own selfish desires and in your own strength to meet the deepest needs you have. If your intention is set on your own desires, your own happiness, you are not intentionally living for God. Your focus is on you and what you want.

I thought if I lived outside my own intentions, my own desires, what I wanted, I would never be happy. God is amazing. As you set your heart and mind upon Him, those things you desperately need on the inside, get filled. That desire no longer consumes your intention. We can never fulfill our deepest needs with anything in this world. It is a path of misery and ruin.

Intentionally living for God is intentionally seeking Him in very aspect of our lives. It is willfully changing the focus from self to Him. It is giving HIm the desires of our hearts, our selfishness, and our pride and allowing His purpose to be worked in us and through us. It is intentionally saying, your will be done, not mine.

Allowing Christ to give us introspect we need to examine ourselves by looking at two things:

Do you truly want to live your life intentionally for God? If so, how can you incorporate your desire to live this life into your everyday life?

Pray and reflect on areas of your spiritual life that you want to work on more closely with God.  Prayer life, Bible study, acts of service, giving or living out the fruits of the Spirit.

Do you want to work on your thought life or speech?

Is there a Bible verse that you want to live out intentionally? (Matthew 25:23 or Philippians 4:13)

Ask Him where He wants you to live intentionally.  Then listen.  When those words come to you, don’t dismiss them. Pray about them.

Lastly, form a goal, set a plan, and follow through with the deliberate action.

Living intentionally for God is hard work. It takes a daily commitment and Christ to change who we are in our heart and mind to focus on our Heavenly Father. We have to change our motives and ambitions. We have to change our behavior and thought patterns. The reward…. The reward for doing so is beyond measure.

Strength:

¹⁶ May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who has loved us and given us eternal encouragement and good hope by grace, ¹⁷ encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good work and word. 2 Thessalonians 2:16-17

Peace:

⁷ And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4:7

Love, Peace, and Joy that removes ALL fear:

²⁷ “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Don’t let your heart be troubled or fearful. John 14:27

Shelter:

⁴ He will cover you with his feathers;
you will take refuge under his wings.
His faithfulness will be a protective shield.
Psalm 91:4

Receive love and give love:

⁷ Dear friends, let us love one another, because love is from God, and everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. ⁸ The one who does not love does not know God, because God is love. ⁹ God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his one and only Son into the world so that we might live through him. ¹⁰ Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. ¹¹ Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another. 1 John 4:7-11

All that we strive for and need, God gives to us when we intentionally live for Him. These are just a few of His amazing promises. Everything you are looking for today can be found in God through Jesus. Proverbs 3:5-6 we are told to not walk in our own way, but the way of God. We can say we want to, but do we intentionally do it?