What does that mean?

Nothing in life has any meaning until you give it meaning. 

What does that mean?   Well, if someone says to me 'You should run a marathon; think of what an achievement that would be'. It doesn't mean a thing to me. I have no desire to do that.   However,  when I look at my fitness watch after a 5K (3.10 mile) run, if it says more than 36 minutes, I feel disappointed. Why is that?  Well I give meaning to the time it takes me to run 5k! I want to improve, I want to go a bit faster. I will train harder to meet that goal.  It takes on significance for me.

The same is true with spiritual things. If I give meaning to something, it has meaning (sounds simple, right?).  We had a friend who used to say "Until you're sick and tired of being sick and tired, you'll stay that way!".  What he means is, unless you give meaning (importance, significance, value etc) to healing in your life, you will settle for sickness that you can live with. 

If you don't give meaning (or in other words) value to God's word, you won't pick up you're Bible and read and meditate on it. 

If you don't give value to prayer, you will bimble (for my non UK readers that means: a gentle, meandering walk with no particular haste or purpose) through life trying to solve your own problems.

When we give meaning to something it gains value and priority in our lives. We invest in it, we think about it, we do it, we do stuff that helps with it.

Also we can give meaning to something wrongly, what I mean by that is, I might say I'm a slow runner!  I can see that from the time on my Fitbit, but actually if you and I went for a run, I might be a lot faster than you... but can you see how what I give meaning to, may not be the right thing.  Instead of giving meaning (or power) to the time on my watch, I should give meaning to the fact that I got up and did a 5k run!  

Matthew 6:33 tells us to seek God's Kingdom first and all the other stuff in life we need will follow.  When we give meaning and significance to God's Kingdom stuff, it's amazing how that impacts every other area of our lives!

If you want to know what you have given meaning to, look at how you spend your time and you will see. Look at what makes you feel happy or accomplished or what makes you feel discouraged when you don't manage to do it.

Today's encouragement then, is to evaluate what you give meaning to in your life - is it the right stuff and if not, ask the Holy Spirit to help you change that.

Have a great weekend. 


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