Topic: The Importance Of Lifestyle

Finding hope and the Light by living a certain lifestyle.

A "theme" is the subject, topic, general idea, or the focus of a thought or written expression. Every person's life has, in a manner of speaking, a theme. We choose a theme for our life, although we are not always aware of making this choice. Most often, the theme of our life is made (too often not by our choice) to include or exclude people, places, and situations in our life. The new word today we use to describe the theme of a person's life is "lifestyle." Every person fits into a lifestyle of some kind. Today we see very diverse lifestyles. We see men and women living together who are not married. We see homosexual or gay couples living together. We see leather jacketed bikers who hang out in biker bars. We see executives who do lunches and hit the cocktail party circuit. We see the devout church-going Christian who attends and works in a church. We see the devout Jew who goes to synagogue. In addition, we see hundreds of other lifestyles in our world. All these lifestyles carry a theme or idea about the people, places, and things of the world. To find the Light of Christ and the hope the Light brings to us within our life, we must live a lifestyle reflecting our desire to live in the Christ's Light. We must live a lifestyle leading us to hope, promise, and victory. Unfortunately, there are many defeating lifestyles today. These defeating lifestyles carry with them a built-in hopelessness. To find hope and the Light, the focus of our life should be on doing what God has called us to do without any regard for where we are or the circumstances in which we must live. When a life theme or a lifestyle leaves out God, then suffering ensues. When a life theme or a lifestyle leaves out God, we are not able to do or not able to be what God wants us to do or to be. When our lifestyle leaves out God, we can lead an unholy and ungodly life. When we leave God out of our life, we miss the Light and then we feel the loss of hope the darkness always brings into our heart. A life theme or a lifestyle focusing on doing and being holy means we constantly try to take charge of suffering by using our suffering for the glory of God. By leading a holy and Godly lifestyle, God gives us a foundation on which to stand and a yardstick to measure the godliness or ungodliness of what we see coming toward us. A lifestyle including God provides us with a way to gauge the Light or darkness in people, places, and things. Without a life theme or lifestyle including the Light, including God, and including His love, we get caught up in adversity. With a lifestyle excluding God, we lose control of our life, lose all Light and hope, then find ourselves devastated without knowing why. Living life with a theme of holiness and Godliness focuses on what the Light gives us. By living a godly lifestyle, we receive from God a minute by minute reason and purpose for our being here on earth. When our theme of life or our lifestyle is connected to the Christ's Light and God, the resulting lifestyle is a lifestyle treasuring the Light and a lifestyle letting His Light shine before others.

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These words were posted at one of Shepherd's Care Ministries Sites called Wisdom Moment. This site is located at:
http://www.shepherdscare.net/wisdomminute

Shepherd's Care Ministries Main Site located at:
http://www.shepherdscare.net/