As I went through the chapter, I decided to pull out some details for their own piece. These particular details are how the author breaks down the categories of Love God, Love Others, and Vocation. This probably will not be as useful as reading the book, but maybe better than not doing so.

Love God. Seems simple enough. But sometimes we just are too ignorant to even know how to get started, much less mature enough to be fruitful. As I noted, the author gave us some clues to get us started down the right path. The first clue was Knowing God. The key here is that we have to forget who we want God to be and read His Word to find out who God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit really are, and then we can begin to love Him. The second clue is to Know Yourself. The author calls this self-examination and it is something that I have never been really good at. The third clue is the Bible. Seems like a repeat of step one. Clue four is prayer. And the final clue is a church. It seems like a normal set of clues.

Love Others. This would seem to be the hard part for some of us, but the clues are pretty good. Clue one is love your wife. Clue two is to love your kids. And the final clue here is apparently the tricky one: Have authentic friendships. It says friendship is hard. It takes work. It takes time. It needs trust. And it needs accountability. A friend can ask a question, but you have you give the true answer. As I said, it is hard.

Vocation. Our main job in the world is to serve God and earn an income doing so. We may build skyscrapers, but we need to do it as if working for God. A quote is “If you do your work well, you will earn the chance to speak.” and indicates you need standing in order to present Jesus. The second clue here is that Vocation includes Health, Leisure, Rest, and Recreation. If you are sick, you cannot help others. If you are tired, you can not do well serving others. etc.

Anyway, I thought this might be a good little starter kit for figuring out how to put in the big blocks. Nothing here is magic, it just takes determination and completion.