Several years ago, I introduced an annual focus for my church group as we moved into a new year. What I thought would be a theme for the year has turned out to be a running emphasis that I have accepted as a life guide. I woke up this morning with a new addition. A point of clarity may be a better way to put it.
To begin, I want to list the guiding principles for those who aren’t familiar with what they are. I extrapolated them from my study of the life of Abraham who is known as the father of faith. These guiding principles of life are Vision, Work, Rest, Accounting and Worship.
To summarize: We all should have a vision from God that helps prioritize work that we are involved in on a daily basis. It is just as important that we maintain balance in our lives with proper rest. (Note: There is a time to rest.) If we are working, we should expect a harvest or fruit of our labor. An accounting of our harvest helps us to divide it for various uses. Finally, we should never assume that what we have is simply the fruit of our own strength and ability. We should worship God in every phase of our journey. Thank Him for the vision, rest, the harvest and the wisdom to know what to do with every portion of our harvest.
Now back to my new edition to these guiding principles for life. For some reason, I always struggled with including Accounting as a guiding principle. This concept seemed less obvious to me when I related it to the life of Abraham. Including it required more explanation as if it didn’t quite fit with the others. Despite grappling with including it, I was ultimately satisfied that it did fit and had great importance in the entire process.
While we all could struggle with applying any one of these life principles, I believe Accounting is the most underrated life practice of a believer just as improper accounting is often the downfall of a promising business.
Money, opportunities and other resources can go unnoticed and become underutilized or even stolen from us if we don’t keep a careful watch over them.
We must learn how to protect, invest and manage all of our possessions, including spiritual gifts if we want to enjoy the bountiful life that God has for us. This moves me to expand on the concept of Accounting by introducing another closely related practice that also starts with “A.”
This “A” is for Auditing. As much as many people don’t like accounting, even fewer get excited about the idea of an audit because with an audit comes responsibility and accountability.
Some might ask, what’s the difference between accounting and auditing.
From a bookkeeping standpoint, when the accounting process ends, auditing begins, for the purpose of determining the true and fair picture of books of accounts.
This is when the results of our habits and what we allow in our lives start to manifest.
Thank God we are not saved by works, but that does not exempt us from walking by faith just as Abraham did. We are called to follow the same principles of faith that we observed being practiced by Abraham and all of the heroes of faith we read about in Hebrews 11. (It would be worth your while to read all of Hebrews 11 as you walk into the New Year.)
I will elaborate more on my new “A” word in my next post. In the meantime know that Audit is not a bad word. It’s a useful word for those who want to grow beyond their current harvest.
May God richly bless you in 2019.
I’ve begun working with a group of about 10 students on the development of a service learning project. It appears that this semester’s identified cause will revolve around animal protection and care. This was not my selection but I thought, “Hey, it’s not about me.” I was hoping they would choose a project around Peace, as the previous group had done. The world needs Peace (Inner peace, Non-violence, Equality, and Freedom). My attitude was that we don’t have time to focus on animals when people are hurting, dying on the streets, being treated unfairly and bound with all sorts of addictions. Once 