One Thing – All of Me – All in All – Give Aggressively – Feed on the Bible

Whenever I read All in All, I think of Cars 2 (Big D’s favorite movie) and the fake biofuel. For those not initiated, Sir Axelrod tries to put oil companies out of business so he can sell all the oil he found by hyping renewables and then crushing them. He fails of course because of “Tow Mater, Average Intelligence.” (My favorite movie quote)

Our world is lazy and wants to label people as one thing or another, so they do not have to dig further. My favorite is smart vs. dumb. Tow Mater is supposed to be “dumb”, but he is the worlds best backwards driver. So how can a dumb individual be the best at something.

It goes back to my concept of everyone has a pinwheel of skills/talents/abilities that God has provided a portion of for each person on each spoke. Some can play piano, some cannot. Some can do calculus, some cannot. If we can find those spokes that have the most whatever for us and use it, we get pretty good at it. Some make it their one thing and become the best in the world at it. Swimmers, ball players, scientists, etc.

Others get stuck on trying to use something they are not capable in and we struggle continually. God gives us a set of capabilities and gifts for His purpose. Our worldly talents are to be used to support ourselves in this world and our spiritual gifts are to be used to help others.  Our “One Thing” is to serve God in the manner He created us for.

So one thing we can realize, “We cannot be our own All in All”. Nor can any other human. Only God can be our All in All, and we must submit our lives to Him.

I wrote the other day about guarding our marriages. The best way to do that is to commit to giving “All of Me” to my/our spouse. It’s that old “50/50 doesn’t work”. It has to be 100/100 or half of the good goes undone.

The follow on from this is to Give Aggressively. To our spouse, to our family, to our church, to our neighbors, to our enemies, to whoever you can find to give to. My wife once noted that I almost never tell anyone no when they ask for help, but I do not go around asking people how I can help them. I am not traditionally an aggressive giver. I can be. I should be. But I could improve in this area a lot.

One of the ways I know I can learn to be better about giving and caring in general is to “Feed on the Bible”. God gave us His word to show us the good, the bad, and the path for us to follow. If we look at how generous some in the Bible were or how caring or how impactful, we can learn how to emulate the behavior and develop the skills and make them habitual.

I read Calvin and Hobbes as I think it is funny and sometimes can point out an aspect of the world or of our failure in it to help me. Recently one had Calvin saying he preferred “Maxims that don’t encourage behavior modification”. He is supposed to be six, but boy is this an adult theme if ever there was one.

We are not supposed to see the point or the lesson or the example and move on. They are supposed to change us. To make us into who we are supposed to be. Reading the Bible and taking notes are just steps along the path. We need to make the point a part of our behavior. ‘Faith without works is dead” is how one person put it. Turning our faith into works is a small part of our One Thing.