740 Compartmentalization and Faith - Romans 11:36

Do you ever think about how you put parts of your life in compartments? Or do you? 

Hi, I'm Mike Henry Sr. with Follower of One. Thanks for joining me again today on the Follower of One podcast. Today, and this came from yesterday's podcast, I got to thinking about how we compartmentalize things in our lives or how we might, and so I came to this verse in Romans 11:36, and I'm reading from the New American Standard Bible. "For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen." 

This is a doxology. It's a short statement of praise to God. "From Him and through Him and to Him are all things." So my question for us is how compartmentalized are we? Do you find that you're too busy to pray for your coworkers? Or what about being too busy to spend a few minutes helping someone else? Is the problem of busyness robbing us of the joy of walking with Jesus? If God owns it, all which we talk about in this verse for, "from Him and through Him and into Him are all things," and we spoke in yesterday's episode about how God created it all and He owns it all. 

These are all His things. All of the world and everything that we have and are, and do belongs to Him. So how is it that we put ourselves in a position where to do something with our faith means that we have to stop doing something else? I get challenged by that every time we do the Marketplace Mission Trip because I'm tempted to feel as many are that we're too busy to integrate our faith into what we do every day.  Yet we have these examples of Jesus challenging us, and from the scripture in Luke 10, for example, we have the story of Mary and Martha and Jesus telling Martha that Mary has chosen the good thing because only one thing is necessary.

Matthew 19 has the story of the rich young ruler who wouldn't sell all of his possessions, and I think we sympathize a little bit with these people and we go back about our daily lives. At least I do, but I wanna challenge myself today. What part of my daily life am I keeping from God? Do I want to do something about it? Do you? 

I mean, I get it. We can't go on an overseas mission trip, but I can't pray for the person I'm in line behind at a stoplight instead of wishing they'd get out my way. When I fail to involve Jesus in everything I do, I miss the joy of doing everything with Him and for Him. "For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things." Our verse says.

How much more am I willing to miss? How about you? What can we do today? Well, to me, I start with this daily prayer and I mentioned this in yesterday's episode too. I start with "here I am. Jesus, please use me today. Draw my mind back to you." The Holy Spirit living in me has the power to help me focus and bring my attention to my relationship with Christ. Even when I'm in a difficult staff meeting or I'm being chewed out by a customer, or I'm in line behind someone slow in traffic, God can do this, and so I want to depend on him. 

Today I want to challenge us. Let's remember that all of what we experience and all of what we interact with every person that we meet, we all belong to God and we're on His plan and His program, not our own. That's how I compartmentalize. I take responsibility for the things I think I control, and at that moment I've segmented part of my life and tried to take it away from God. Today I wanna be available to God to do what He has for me to do today, and I hope you can do that too, because when we are available to Him, then we experience Him.

We experience His joy. We experience His purpose in everything that we do. Why not take a moment right now and tell God "here I am. Put me to work today, father." And watch what He does in your day.  Then join us over at https://community.Followerofone.org and let us know how it goes. We're all working to do this for one another together.

Thanks for joining us and being Marketplace Ministers to the people that we meet every day. Thank you very much.