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A Spiritual Life Plan

            An off-handed comment changed John Goddard’s life forever.  At a dinner party, fifteen year old John heard a family friend remark, “I’d give anything to be John’s age again.  I really would do things differently.  I would set out and accomplish more of the dreams of my youth”.  That remark motivated John to create a list of 127 things that he wanted to do before he died.  Some of them were rather common (Number 126: Marry and have children) while others required considerable courage (Number 1: Explore the Nile River.  He fulfilled that one by becoming the first man to kayak from the headwaters of the Nile to the Mediterranean).  By the time of his death in 2013, at the age of 88, John had checked off 111 of his original 127 goals earning him the nickname “The real-life Indiana Jones”. 
            Goddard’s story made me wonder, “What would a ‘spiritual life goals’ list look like and what would that cause us to do?”   Paul’s prayer for the church in Ephesus may be a good place to start.
            “I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God” (Ephesus 3:14-19).
            What if that became your prayer?  What would happen if you focused on God’s strength working in and through you?  What would change if you remembered that, as a Christian, God’s Son and his Spirit dwell in you?  What if your every word and action was motivated by love for God and love for people?  What would it look like if you were “filled to the measure of all the fullness of God?”
            “What do I want to be when I grow up?” is a powerful question.
            Even more powerful is, “What does God want me to be when I grow up spiritually?”

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