Where Are You Going

Earlier this year while returning home from a youth event in Conway, AR, my wife, Angie, snapped this shot of our church bus headed home.  As with most trips there is a great excitement and energy in the going, but it also ends with the quiet comfort of returning home.

In our lives we have many parts to the journey we are living.  There is faith, family, fitness/health, finance . . .  Many will say that we must keep a balance among these and other areas of our busy lives.  Over the past couple of years my thinking has changed on this.  I used to also believe in balancing, but have come to believe rather in integration.

When we seek balance we are actually living in dis-integration, separating our lives into distinct boxes of unrelated thought.  However if we strive for integration we recognize that we have one life, and that it all works best when it is all working together.  As Christians this is summed up very succinctly in Romans 8:28 (NASB) "and we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose."  This screams out to me that integration is better than balance.

The life of integration then must center on God and be built upon His Word, and His will for our lives.  Everything else must then be structured around that faith.  We then can ask the question, how does this part of my life impact my relationship with God?  Each thing we do has an impact on every other part of our life as they are interdependent, thus integrated, and cannot effectively be fully separated.  Be it our finances, our health, or any other aspect of life.  In the end Solomon tells us in the final two verses of Ecclesiastes, "The conclusion when all has been heard is, fear God and keep His commandments, because this applies to every person.  For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden whether it is good or evil." (NASB)

This week look into your life and ask yourself, am I living an integrated or disintegrated life?  I pray that you are or will be living in an integrated way.  It is the basis to Do Well, and truly "head home".