When we number our days against eternity, we more urgently desire to accomplish something important with the time we have left.
We long that God would come along side to assure us that the work we do stacks substantial in His eyes.

We want to be about the business of God. God’s business, we rightly conclude… lasts.

Enter the fog of men…

Some will tell you that God’s business is called ministry and that ministry is a thing men do professionally. They will tell you that your business, the time you spend at work each day is… well… it’s something else.
Something less.
They might say your work is good for supporting the work of God, but that it is something other than the work of God.

This… is a problem.

The idea trivializes God’s business by reducing it to formula, holding it hostage to fictitious partitions.

“Professionals over here… amateurs over there….”

Such a paradigm discourages many to the margins where they think they belong.
But God doesn’t want you in the margins. He wants you in the center of what He’s doing. He wants you to work for Him.

From: Colossians 3:23-24

Part I of ‘Teach us to number our days…’

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Part I of ‘Teach us to number our days…’

Click the ‘play’ button below to listen.
(If you cannot see the audio controls below, click the title of this post to refresh. Flash Player is required, click here to download.)

UNC meets weekly at the Atlanta Bread Company in Cumming GA. Each Friday, the morning’s opening talk is posted to the blog. Don’t forget, you can easily subscribe to our RSS feed.

Also, you can subscribe to our Podcast in iTunes. Start iTunes, enter the iTunes Store, and search for “UNC Friday Morning”.

In Psalm 90, Moses approached God with an urgent request. Not once, but twice. Moses’ singular voice carried upon it the burden of many. It’s a burden embedded in every man - a desire that his work count for something.

Confirm for us the work of our hands;
Yes, confirm the work of our hands.

From whatever direction you approach, there comes a day when you begin to ask yourself the important questions - questions regarding your purpose.

Moses’ petition pointed this direction and it burned against the backdrop of his awareness of time.

In verse 12, Moses asked God to give him perspective, to help him see his days through God’s eyes. When you see things as God sees them, this is called wisdom.

Now, wisdom can be a good thing. But wisdom also exposes urgent things, for with wisdom comes an understanding that our days are brief and our time is short.

This epiphany hits many of us in our middle years. At some point we digest the fact that the years behind us outnumber the days in front, and we begin to take inventory of how we will invest the time we have left.

Knowing your time is short heightens your sense of urgency. This process inevitably demands you evaluate the meaning of your work… the place you invest the bulk of your days.

We want our work to count for something. Something bigger than the stuff we gather or the plaques we hang or the ink we score.

When your gaze finally slips past the bookend to your days, you begin to think in terms of things that will last past you.

Which causes you to contemplate eternity.

Which leads you to think about your ministry.

Which brings you back to the works of your hands.

If you’re like me, your calendar is stuffed to overflowing with deadlines and drudgery. While your hands are working to make a living, your heart is longing to make a difference. This… is a tension we navigate every day.

From: Psalm 90

Daniel C. Diaddigo / Copyright 2008 Rilian

Do you want to make noise…
or do you want to make to make an impact?

Sometimes you have to choose between the two.

We, men, make a lot of noise about a thing we label “leadership”. We buy books, go to seminars, hire coaches and pay money pursuing leadership; if only we would invest similar passion practicing it.

Leadership is not a spectator sport. Nor is it a course you can audit.

God designed you to lead in a place specific to you.

By leadership, I’m not speaking to that corporate claptrap culture force feeds us, that insanely empty notion that equates leadership with noise. God does not call you to make noise.

He calls you to make an impact.

And, He strategically scripted your generational impact from a place no other man can leverage.

In the fifth chapter of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, God tasks men to “love your wives as Christ loved the church.”

There, in the center of that impossible to accomplish on your own exhortation, lies the essence of leadership. Leadership begins in the heart, manifests in the home, and then bleeds outwards from there.

It begins with men who takes seriously the their calling to lead as Jesus led and to love as Jesus loved.

How, exactly, did Jesus love His bride?

First and foremost, He moved in obedient submission to His heavenly Father. Leadership in Jesus’ world, can look more like followership in ours.

Leadership looks like… walking with God.

Will you follow your impulse to lead?

Then lead in you heart and in your home.

Practice… walking with God.