I was driving back to my office today after a morning sales appointment when I tuned into the radio (AM 570) for some late morning sports talk-the Jim Rome show. In the small segment of the program that I caught, he shared an encouraging story about the multi-millionaire Dallas Cowboys star quarterback, Tony Romo. In short, Romo was on his way to see a movie with a friend of his when he invited a homeless man who was cashing in some change at a Cinemark Theatre in Dallas to join them, free of charge. The homeless man (Doc) declined the offer as he said he had planned to spend his day handing out fliers for a nearby consignment store before recognizing the generous gentleman. "Was that Tony Romo?" he asked the theater worker.
It sure was. Doc rushed across the street to the store and requested the day off. By the time he got back to the theater, the feature film, Role Models, had already started. Romo noticed Doc walking into the theater and waved the man over to sit by him and his friend.
As the story goes, the $67 million football star, who also made the news this past September for changing a couple's tire on a roadside on the way home from a game, sat next to his two friends and shared some laughs for the duration of the movie.
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Throughout my life, I've noticed both myself, and the church as a whole, establishing the sole focus of Christianity as inviting the Holy Spirit into our hearts and asking for the forgiveness of our sins in order to achieve eternal life. But as my pastor, Mark Foreman, says in his book Wholly Jesus, the sad reality is that once eternal salvation has been confirmed by asking Jesus to dwell in our heart, we rarely let Him back out.
We so often turn Christianity into a skinny faith, and not an all encompassing way of life right now. We put all of our focus and hope in the salvation of our soul, we all to often forget that not only does God want us fully when we pass over to the other side, but that he wants to transform every part of our life here and now-on this earth. It's important to remember that Jesus Christ's victory over death through His resurrection leaves no room for an emaciated version of God's kingdom on this Earth. Our faith in God should not allow us to be caught sitting on our hands while on this earth, waiting for God to take us into His arms when we join Him someday in heaven. Our faith should spur us to action, transforming our stance on how we take care of our bodies, how we work, how we treat other people, etc. God wants His kingdom to come ont.o this earth right now, through us.
My recent prayer has been that God would allow me to be completely content with JUST Him and His plan for my life. I've found that when I begin to look anywhere else but to God for contentment, peace, joy, etc. I'm let down 100% of the time. Not always immediately, but eventually. Whether I put my hope in a job, running, a relationship, my family, my friends, the Chargers haha , or anything else, I'm never completely satisfied. At the end of the day, all I want for my life is absolute contentment in God alone.
I'm entirely convinced that the only way to have complete contentment with just God and His plan for my life on this earth is to live in such a way that I allow God's kingdom to enter my life every day. I know all of us can be completely content with just God because He cares about everything we do. It's not in God's nature to punch our salvation ticket then abandon us to face life on our own. With God comes a new life, even on this Earth too. As he showed to us over and over in the gospels, He wants to heal our physical sicknesses (healing of the leper, the paralytic, etc). He wants to mend our broken relationships (prodigal son). He wants to feed the poor (feeding of the 5,000). We can be completely content with just God because in Him you never get a god that sits on a shelf, watching us go about our lives alone. In Him you have everything how it was meant to be, without sin. In God, you don't just gain a renewed soul, but a renewed everything. Every aspect of your life is renewed and made complete.
I challenge us all to allow God to change how we live by doing things like Tony Romo did for the homeless man-to let God back out of our hearts. We have to allow God to encompass every part of us and everything we do.
We can never escape God's love. I hope the people around us can never escape our love either.
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