Evaluating faithfulness

January time to reflect on spiritual goals for new year

Everything that God wants you and I to achieve for Him as believers must be done within a certain time frame.

The older we get, the closer we are to the end of our earthly race and the more reason why we need to continuously evaluate ourselves in the light of the divine callings and the greatest purposes of God for our individual lives. This is the reason I believe that an ancient sage once said that ‘the unexamined life is not worth living.’

And it’s the same reason why the Psalmist encouraged us to ask for a heart of knowledge in order to number our days on earth.

As believers, we must never lose sight of the chief aim of the Christian race, which is to please God and to become like Christ. In the text for this writing, Apostle Paul evaluated his earthly life and enumerated the three core things he achieved with time as he neared the tail end of his earthly life. Paul here submitted that he fought the good fight, he kept the faith and finished his own race. May you and I not run other people’s race in life! Thus, we must take to heart the fact that, a day is coming in the distant future when everything we did within the context of the time that has been allotted to each of us would be evaluated not by human standards or ideals but by the standards of God Himself. And this, I believe is the more reason why each of us must understand the purpose of our individual creation and live the rest of our lives pursuing that sole purpose passionately.

Part of the need for us to keep evaluating our faithfulness to Christ steams from the belief that eternity is superior to time and man was made for eternity and not for time. God therefore has given each of us time not to spend, but to invest for eternity as we carefully live out our lives here within the context of divine will and purpose. With this understanding in mind, it is imperative for us to know that, God expects us to do certain things within our lifetimes based on the gift of time, talents and individual resources He has deposited in our lives. Thus, it is important for us to address the question of whether we are progressively pleasing the Lord with the pattern and outflow of our lives.

You and I can continually put our lives in proper perspective as we evaluate ourselves within the context of the following questions:

1. How are you growing and maturing in the nature and likeness of Christ? Galatians 2:20

2. Are you cultivating the right values and living with utmost integrity? Philippians 1:27

3. Are you caring for the interests of others? Galatians 5:14

4. How are you developing your gifts and your talents? Proverbs 18:16

5. What new things are you learning?

6. Who are your accountability partners? 2 Timothy 2:2?

7. Who are the people in your life that you ought to tell about the love of Christ?

8. Who are the people in your life you are called to support with material relief?

9. Are you faithfully expecting the second coming of Christ? Revelations 1:7.

As we start a new year, these are issues we have to resolve even as we lean on God’s grace for a fruitful year. May you receive the commendation of the Lord in this new year of your life in the name of Jesus Christ.