Priorities

Only 22% of women are happy according to a recent survey. One of the survey's authors suggested a reason;

"Thirty or forty years ago women were happier because they had narrower ambitions. ... Now women are more competitive and more ambitious. But it doesn't seem to make them happier."

So, how ambitious are you? What makes you happy?

Are you looking for security? Being comfortable with a nice house, decent car, surrounded by loving family and friends.
Or is success the dream you are chasing? A successful career with the rewards that follow.
Or perhaps you want success for your children?

What is it that you really want out of life?

As a Christian, shouldn't the better question be,
What is it that God wants for your life?

The answer to that question is found in Romans 8 v 29

"For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the first-born among many brothers."

God's purpose for us is to be like Jesus.

For the Christian everything else is secondary to that one purpose - that we should be conformed to the likeness of his Son.

In all the daily round of activity, is that what motivates you?

To be like Jesus? To be holy, even as he is holy?

When Christlikeness becomes our ambition.
When we want for ourselves what God wants for us - we begin to develop a different perspective. Every circumstance:

success
failure
disappointment
illness

becomes a tool in the hands of a loving, sovereign God, to shape us ... to mould us ... to conform us into the likeness of his Son. (Romans 8 v 28 -29)

The Christian life should be actively counter-cultural.

What motivates the Christian is not success, achievement or well-being - these are things which consume the world.

The Christian's ambition is centred on Christ and the knowledge that God is conforming his children to the likeness of his Son. That work of conformity, which he began in us when when we were saved, he has promised to complete.

"... he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus."(Phil 1 v 6)

One day, "we shall bear the likeness of the man from heaven" perfectly. (1 Cor 15)
One day, "we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is." (1 John 3 v 2)

On that day Jesus, as the 'first-born among many brothers,' (v 29) will be exalted as our pre-eminent Lord and Saviour. He will have all the glory.

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