Shownotes
Today, we dive into the powerful message of Ephesians 1:3-10, which emphasizes the importance of keeping an eternal mindset amidst the chaos of our daily lives. I share how this scripture has been a lifeline for me, especially during challenging times, reminding us of the spiritual blessings we have in Christ and our identity as His adopted children. With everything happening in the world, it’s easy to get bogged down by negativity, but focusing on the eternal can actually shift our perspective and help us navigate through life's ups and downs. I discuss practical ways to cultivate this eternal focus, like starting our mornings with scripture to set the tone for our day and using discernment about what we allow into our hearts and minds. Let’s explore how we can reset our mindset and truly live with an eye on the eternal, pouring into our communities and reflecting the grace we've received.
Delving into Ephesians 1:3-10, we unpack the incredible blessings we have in Christ, emphasizing the significance of keeping an eternal mindset. With the world feeling increasingly chaotic, I reflect on personal challenges and how the truth of this scripture has helped me navigate through tough times. One of my favorite lines from 'Living Water' plays in my mind: 'One life soon passed, only what's done for you will last.' It’s a call to prioritize what truly matters, especially when life feels overwhelming.
I share insights on practical ways to cultivate an eternal focus, starting with the importance of beginning our day with Scripture. This practice can radically influence our perspective and how we approach the rest of our day. I recount a recent experience of listening to the news first thing in the morning, which unfortunately filled my heart with despair. This serves as a reminder that we must be intentional about our inputs and choose to engage with content that uplifts our spirits and aligns with God’s truth.
As we close, the discussion highlights the importance of community and pouring into others as a reflection of our faith. By focusing on love, kindness, and the fruits of the Spirit, we can navigate the complexities of life with grace and purpose. This episode is not just a call to endure but an invitation to thrive by keeping our eyes on the eternal, reminding ourselves of the bigger picture that God has for us.
Takeaways:
- Keeping an eternal mindset is crucial, especially during difficult personal times, helping us maintain perspective.
- Starting your day with Scripture can significantly impact your mindset and overall outlook on life.
- Being strategic about your daily inputs, especially regarding news and social media, is essential for mental health.
- Focusing on the eternal allows us to pour into our community and help others in meaningful ways.
- We often need reminders to keep our focus on God and what truly matters in life.
- Even a simple morning routine of engaging with Scripture can yield profound transformation and clarity.
Links referenced in this episode:
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- Daily Grace company
- YouVersion
- NPR
- The Pour over
- Shane and Shane
- True Grit Podcast
Social Media Links:
Transcripts
If you only have a couple minutes for scriptures today, I got you.
Speaker A:Welcome to today's bite sized biblecast.
Speaker A:We've got a little bit longer of a section today.
Speaker A:We are in Ephesians 1, verses 3 through 10 and I'm in the ESV.
Speaker A:Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him in love.
Speaker A:He predestined us to our adoption to Himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.
Speaker A:In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us in all wisdom and insight, making known to us the mystery of his will according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
Speaker A:I don't know about you, but the world is a little bit crazy lately.
Speaker A:Both like the world at large and my smaller personal inner world.
Speaker A:And it can be really difficult to keep an eternal mindset.
Speaker A:But this passage of scripture popped up in my Bible study today.
Speaker A:I'm doing a scripture study on the attributes of God through Daily Grace company and today's was grace.
Speaker A:Funnily enough, Daily Grace company We're talking about grace and this passion.
Speaker A:This passage really stuck out to me because something that has been very helpful and beneficial to me as I've gone through some really crazy times in life, particularly when I was fighting multiple legal battles during my divorce, some not related to my actual divorce.
Speaker A:Something that helped me get through it, like truly get through it and survive it was keeping an eternal mindset.
Speaker A:One of my very favorite songs of all time is Living Water by Shane and Shane.
Speaker A:And one of the lines in the song is One life soon passed, only what's done for you will last.
Speaker A:And that line would just play over, over and over and over in my head because it's true.
Speaker A:At the end of the day, everything that we're dealing with right here on earth is kind of hitting us in the face moment by moment.
Speaker A:It's what we see, it's what we feel, it's what we experience.
Speaker A:But there is a bigger answer.
Speaker A:There is a finish line that we can't see yet, and that is the eternal.
Speaker A:And keeping our mind on that can honestly Sometimes feel a little bit irresponsible.
Speaker A:But at the end of the day, focusing on that eternal mindset, focusing on the things that are not yet here but are to come, is the most productive thing we can do.
Speaker A:We all know it's kind of like a common principle not to focus in on yourself, but to focus on others.
Speaker A:Focus on the long term.
Speaker A:That's kind of general advice.
Speaker A:That's what we tell to our children, right?
Speaker A:Don't be selfish, try to think about others.
Speaker A:Focusing on the eternal gives us an actual reference point for that.
Speaker A:Because when we focus on the eternal, when we focus on the things of God, what are the things of God?
Speaker A:I mean, look at the fruit of the spirit, right?
Speaker A:We've got love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, faithfulness, gentleness, self control.
Speaker A:Those are all things that take the focus off of ourselves and allow us to pour into others.
Speaker A:And I think we can all agree, whether you are religious, whether you are non religious, whether you prefer to say you have a relationship, not a religion, whatever your spirituality looks like, or lack of spirituality, we can all agree that community is incredibly important and that pouring into our community, pouring into those around us, is really never going to be a waste of time.
Speaker A:So focusing on the eternal not just resets our hearts and our minds for things that are going to better our immediate circumstances.
Speaker A:It also helps us to keep in the forefront of our mind the things of God and the things that are yet to come and the things that God has already done for us.
Speaker A:The sacrifice of Jesus, all of that.
Speaker A:So this passage talks about what happens when we keep an eternal mindset and why we need to keep an eternal mindset.
Speaker A:But how do we actually do that?
Speaker A:That is the trick and that's what I want to talk about.
Speaker A:One of the absolute most helpful things I can recommend is having a reset point in your morning that gets you focused on scripture first thing.
Speaker A:So even when you have absolutely zero energy, when you can't get out of bed, I would very strongly recommend the first thing you do when you wake up in the morning.
Speaker A:Whether it's grabbing your Bible, whether it's grabbing your phone, because grabbing our phone is pretty much muscle memory for most of us.
Speaker A:Have the first input of the day be scripture.
Speaker A:I personally love the YouVersion app.
Speaker A:They've got a really awesome feature where they will have a verse of the day that has the verse.
Speaker A:There's like a two minute little talk on it.
Speaker A:If you have time for that.
Speaker A:There's some guided prayer on it.
Speaker A:There's a couple prompts.
Speaker A:It really can be as short and sweet as just opening the YouVersion app or whatever.
Speaker A:A lot of different Bible apps have that feature.
Speaker A:I just happen to use the YouVersion app, opening it and reading the verse of the day, or you can get a little more in depth.
Speaker A:But having your very first input of the day, the scripture, is incredibly helpful for having that little reset point and getting your day off to a great start.
Speaker A:Like yesterday, my husband and I, after we dropped our kids off at school, we made the mistake of listening to NPR's Up first, which kind of recaps what's going on in the news.
Speaker A:Because I was like, oh, I feel like I heard something positive like, let's see what's.
Speaker A:What's going on?
Speaker A:And that was a huge mistake.
Speaker A:Like, let's be so for real.
Speaker A:There's just not a lot of good news right now.
Speaker A:I even like, specifically, I was like, I'm gonna find some good news.
Speaker A:And I read.
Speaker A:I. I also subscribed to the Pour over, which is a Christian view of the news.
Speaker A:They're.
Speaker A:They do a pretty good job of being politically neutral.
Speaker A:And I was like, you know what?
Speaker A:The Pour over will have some good news for me.
Speaker A:And it didn't.
Speaker A:And so looking back, I'm like, oh, honey, your first input of the day was not scripture.
Speaker A:It was the hopelessness of the world.
Speaker A:What did you expect, dear?
Speaker A:What did you expect?
Speaker A:So something super, super simple that can make all of the difference in your day is starting your day off with scripture.
Speaker A:And a second, like, mini point to that.
Speaker A:You do not always have to be 100% informed.
Speaker A:It is incredibly important to know what's going on in the world.
Speaker A:And I think, especially right now, as Christians, we have a very strong responsibility to have a voice, especially as our country is turning more and more to Christian nationalism, which some people view favorably.
Speaker A:We need to talk about that.
Speaker A:But that's not the topic of this video.
Speaker A:Especially as our country is doing things supposedly in the name of Jesus, we do have a responsibility to speak up and say, actual truth.
Speaker A:Share actual truth.
Speaker A:Because, fun fact, just because you can quote words from the Bible doesn't mean you're sharing truth.
Speaker A:But that's another story for another time, and I have plenty of videos about that if you want to go search on through.
Speaker A:We do have a responsibility to share truth, but that does not mean that the most productive thing we can do is keep up to date on the hopelessness of the world, learn to use discernment.
Speaker A:And I'm talking very much to myself right now.
Speaker A:I I am famous for like seeing a headline, reading the article, wanting to understand the support for the article, wanting to find the truth and then falling down a rabbit hole of hopelessness and being very dark place mentally.
Speaker A:We do not always have to know all of the details of what's going on, use discernment and strategically engage in things like the news, social media.
Speaker A:Those can be good things.
Speaker A:It's important to have an idea of what's going on and to be informed so we can have intelligent conversations and also have our view of the world informed by scripture and the knowledge that we have within us of God, the things of God, what truth actually is, all of that good stuff.
Speaker A:But choose strategically where you're going to place your energy.
Speaker A:You do not need to be up 100% on the news 100% of the time.
Speaker A:You do not always need to know what that girl who bullied you in high school is doing, how many kids she has now.
Speaker A:But the point is we do not always need to know what is going on a hundred percent of the time with complete knowledge.
Speaker A:Oh my gosh.
Speaker A:Ranger so those are my two recommendations for you today.
Speaker A:Find a reset point even if you already have a morning scripture routine of some kind of schedule.
Speaker A:Another check in for yourself.
Speaker A:God, during my quiet time yesterday, let me pull up my journal here and I'll read it to you.
Speaker A:So during my quiet time yesterday, I was asking God how I can support my husband through something difficult that we're dealing with right now.
Speaker A:And God said, eyes on me.
Speaker A:Sunup to sundown.
Speaker A:A little snack in the morning will not sustain you during a marathon.
Speaker A:Woof.
Speaker A:So even when we have a scripture routine going, which I am not great at, I have a good rhythm.
Speaker A:I but that rhythm gets disrupted a lot of the time.
Speaker A:So even when I am in my habit of having that morning rhythm with scripture, that's not enough for us to get through the day.
Speaker A:So even if you already have something, a reset point during the morning, I want to encourage you to add something.
Speaker A:Not as another item on your to do list, not as something you should do.
Speaker A:If you've been following my content, you know how I feel about the word should.
Speaker A:But as a refreshing point in your day, we cannot run a marathon subsisting on a little snack that we had in the morning.
Speaker A:Scripture is here to feed us, to encourage us, to grow us, and we get to take advantage of that.
Speaker A:It's not a matter of should.
Speaker A:Even if you don't have time to read more scripture Audio Bible Shane and Shane makes a lot of their music just based off chunks of Scripture.
Speaker A:So those are great options for getting more truth into your heart and your mind, even when you don't have extra time to do stuff during the day.
Speaker A:So quick little recap.
Speaker A:We need to focus on keeping our eyes on things above, on keeping that eternal mindset, because that very much helps keep us from getting mired down in how incredibly hopeless the world is right now and really how hopeless the world is at large.
Speaker A:We need Jesus, and most of us don't have Jesus.
Speaker A:Even those of us who fully believe that we are calling on the name of Jesus, there are some of us who are going to get to eternity someday and be told, go away.
Speaker A:I never knew you.
Speaker A:Matthew 25 is pretty clear about that.
Speaker A:So keeping our hearts, heart and our mind, and therefore our actions focused on things above is going to be incredibly helpful.
Speaker A:And two ways that you can do that are by having a reset point first thing in the morning where you are pouring scripture into your heart and your mind in a way that is accessible.
Speaker A:It does not have to look a certain way.
Speaker A:It does not have to have a certain depth or a certain intensity.
Speaker A:Even just the simple act of taking in Scripture as your first input of the day can be, and has been for me, completely invaluable.
Speaker A:But then second, being strategic and using discernment with what kinds of inputs you allow into your heart and your mind.
Speaker A:After that first reference point of scripture first thing in the morning, you do not need to be 100% up to date on the news.
Speaker A:You do not need to scroll on TikTok, on Instagram, on wherever you're scrolling.
Speaker A:Use discernment and filter things out.
Speaker A:If you start to get overwhelmed, if you start to get mired in hopelessness and kind of feel worked up like I was yesterday after I made the mistake of listening to npr, take a second reset with scripture and retrain your mind to focus on things above.
Speaker A:Now, quick little plug here.
Speaker A:I do post all of these videos as podcast episodes along with other episodes on my podcast, which is the True Grit Podcast.
Speaker A:You can find it on Spotify, you can find it anywhere.
Speaker A:You can head to the link in my bio and be directed there.
Speaker A:So if you would go subscribe and leave me five stars, that would mean so incredibly much to me.
Speaker A:But let me know what you're struggling with right now and I would love to put together some content for you, so make sure you follow for more.
Speaker A:Go subscribe to my podcast and let me know what you're struggling with.
Speaker A:And how can I encourage you lately.
Speaker A:I'll talk to you in the next one.
Speaker A:Bye.
