Guidelines For Living

Guest (Male): Take a break from your busy schedule and join Harold Sala for Guidelines for Living.

Harold Sala: "My husband and I have been listening to you for a long time," writes a friend of Guidelines. Omitting the very complimentary things she then wrote, she continued, "We have been ever evolving in our spiritual walk and find ourselves at a painful standstill, not knowing how to proceed."

The letter tells the story of so many today. As the years pass by, your life gets more complex. Increasing demands are made on your diminishing time and energy. More seems to be better.

Going to the bottom line, she wrote, "Every day, we talk about how we can go to the next level of serving the Lord. We are being called but do not know how or which way to proceed in this matter. When you are surrounded by everyone that acts like it means something to move to a bigger house, have your kitchen redone, or win a soccer game, I acquiesce and painfully give in and follow the masses. We truly are living lives of quiet desperation."

In the moments that remain on today's edition of Guidelines, ponder the following thoughts that can make a tremendous difference—ones I constantly strive to follow personally.

Guideline number one: Prioritize. You can't do it all. You can't have it all. You can't be all things to all people. Like it or not, you've got to decide what is important in your life. This, of course, includes the upward perspective. What is my purpose in life? Does God have something new, something different, something valuable for me to yet accomplish, which isn't going to get done with the grinding routine I have right now?

Guideline number two: Authenticate. This means draw the line in the dirt and step across the divide of being driven by your culture—buying things you don't need, doing things you don't want, even saying things because everybody else is saying the same thing. Being different is not always being better, but being authentic and genuine means you are in the company of the few, not the masses.

Guideline three: Simplify. I'm thinking of a group of middle-aged adults who got fed up with the commercialism of having more and more. They decided to pledge to each other that with the exception of food, medicine, and toiletries, they would buy nothing for six months. Was it a challenge? You know it was.

The six-month experience lasted a year and changed their lives. One of the books that has influenced my life is Richard Foster's *Freedom of Simplicity*. The media and the constant bombardment of ads have brainwashed us into living beyond our means, unhappy and frustrated without the newest of everything. So sad.

Guideline number four: Purify your thought life. Take time to fast and to seek God's will for your life. Friend, it is never too late to redeem your future, whether it may be many years or a few. Wash away the acid of commercialism by touching the lives of hurting people. Give away the junk in your closet or garage and refuse to refill the same space again.

Guideline five: Refocus and reconnect. If you've lost your first love, strive to regain it. Rekindle the spark that you had when you were first married, dirt poor but madly in love with each other.

Walk through the woods alone. Look at the stars, meditate on God's greatness and His love for you. Determine you will no longer walk the broad path to the shopping center but find the narrow one, the one less traveled on, which brings peace and contentment. It's not an impossible quest at all. Corrie ten Boom was right when she said, "We ought not to hold on to our possessions so tightly because it hurts too much when God pries them out of our hands."

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