Preparing for the ‘Fourth Quarter’
Our Mission
To present Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord to business and professional men and to develop Christian business and professional men to carry out the Great Commission.
Luke 23.49 observes, Jesus’ friends, including the women who had followed Him from Galilee, stood at a distance watching. A lot of people are standing from a distance watching for God to do something.
Sometimes we are waiting for Him to rain hell fire upon our enemies because we know how much they deserve it. Sometimes we are waiting for Him to heal us or our friends because we know how much He cares for us. Sometimes we are waiting for Him to bless us because we know how much He loves us. We wait, we hope but…..
God is always at work in the world. He takes initiative toward all of His endeavors. He so loved the world that He sent His only Son. While God initiates and often facilitates His plans, He most often requires that we participate to complete them.
God so loved the world that He sent His Son but a teenage couple had to be willing to carry and raise Him in the middle of shame and scorn. Jesus died on the cross to make peace with God for all humanity but the Church is commissioned to go into all the world and make disciples. God has always been at work for the welfare of the world but has required humanity to partner with Him in completing that work.
After creating paradise Adam was formed to care for it. After choosing Noah and his family to repopulate the world, Noah had to build a boat to preserve his family from the flood. After choosing Abraham to be the father of God’s holy people, Abraham and Sarah had to come together to create a son and raise him to continue pursuing God’s promise. After choosing Mary to mother the Son, she had to labor for His arrival. After choosing the twelve to be His disciples, they had to go into all the world and make disciples to keep the mission alive.
We are next in line. The baton of God’s plan is in our hands. We must stop watching from a distance waiting for God to do something. He has already initiated the work we are to do when He lived among us as one of us. Now we must engage. We must serve people as He served and share hope as He shared about the kingdom to come.
The world wont get better until the people of God work harder at making it so.
His Opportunities
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MONDAY MANNA
A service to the business community
A Publication of CBMC International
December 19, 2016
Benefits of Being Authentic
by Jim Mathis
Life can be compared to a football or basketball game, or perhaps the final minutes of a soccer match. At some point you reach the fourth quarter. You feel tired, maybe hurting a little, but there is still time on the clock. There are still plays to be made. Chances are, they are the most important plays of the game. This is where you win or lose the contest.
Unlike football, in real life we cannot see the clock. We do not know how much time we have left. We are also not certain about the score. Are we winning or losing? All we really know is that the game is not over. Our friends are still watching and cheering, and we need to finish strong.
Colonel Harlan Sanders realized that he couldn’t live off of his Social Security benefits, so he started Kentucky Fried Chicken (now known as KFC) when he was 68. Arnold Palmer was still designing golf courses when he died earlier this year at 87, and Jane Pauley was recently named host of CBS’s Sunday Morning news program. She is 65.
We could cite hundreds of other stellar examples of people who achieved much of their finest work in the latter stage of their lives. So the fourth quarter is important – even if we never will be famous.
For me, the fourth quarter is proving to be a good time for writing, teaching and passing along what I have learned to others. Several months ago I realized I had 30 teaching or speaking dates on my calendar to be fulfilled before the end of the year. Some were tax classes, some were leading a group on personal finances, and a few were focused on the crafts of writing or photography. I needed to practice my public speaking skills, since I was going to be putting them into use over the succeeding few months.
When we are young, it seems we have forever in front of us, so we have little concern about the final stages of our lives. However, we reach our 50s or 60s, we start to realize the time for making our mark, a meaningful contribution in life, is growing shorter. So it is wise to regard these latter years in terms of stewardship, even a sacred trust. The Bible has much to say about this:
Time is fleeting. Time passes by relentlessly. We cannot stop it, nor can we conserve it or store it up for later use. It can be tragic to look back on our lives and think of time we failed to use wisely. If we do not use time, we lose it. “Pay careful attention, then, to how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil”
(Ephesians 5:16)
Take advantage of opportunities while you can. In our “fourth quarter,” we have accumulated a lifetime of experience and expertise. When opportunities present themselves to utilize those abilities, we should do so with eagerness. “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the realm of the dead, where you are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom” (Ecclesiastes 9:10).
We are being watched. How we live our life is serves as an example for others. “Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us” (Hebrews 12:1).
Jim Mathis is the owner of a photography studio in Overland Park, Kansas, specializing in executive, commercial and theatrical portraits, and operates a school of photography. He formerly was a coffee shop manager and executive director of CBMC in Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri.
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