Thinking…short term or long term….
Several years ago when taking a seminary class, we studied people groups…it was so interesting…analyzing understanding myself or how we each thought and those around us…were we “big picture” people or detail people, long or short term thinkers, were we impulsive or planners, etc…then we had to write a paper about a fictional family and how they may have functioned…with illustrations…totally a judgment call…but, it made my husband and I really think through where we were on the spectrum…how we looked life, how we worked, how we related to others, how we spent money, how we invested, how we looked at the future, even how we looked at God…
We found we both tended to forego short term things for a long term goal, like working or looking for ways to save for college, rather than just use earnings immediately and not have funds for school…what was the best use of time, etc…
These thoughts and this information has helped on many projects, through many trials and temptations…helping to analyze and choose the right course for us and now, as a widow, for me…
The downside is we tended to analyze things to death and it takes a lot of time…the upside is it slowed us down from impulsiveness…but, there still has to be a balance…
I have been thinking/working through a ministry outlet in another area where there is a difference in short term versus long term thinking amongst a group of people. None are right or wrong, just different approaches…we just threw out thought questions on for various ideas, “brainstorming “…to come to a conclusion…with an assignment for each to find answers …then meet at a later date…which gives time to think through the solution…
(Personally, I would like to to go faster, but time gives more time for prayer for right choices and wisdom…)…
Our pastor brought up this long term versus short term idea recently about Jesus…people wanted quick healing, answers, food rather than His gift of eternity…they wanted bread to eat versus His offer of Bread of Life…they wanted immediate healing rather than the Healer of the soul…
What is our response to Jesus? Some have to study and think through where He is in their lives…others come immediately…neither is wrong or right…but we need to come…He has our eternal good for us in mind and desires that we seek and find Him, because he loves us so much…
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—
Eph.2.4-5
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.
Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.
In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
1John.4.7-10
Thank YOU….
Oh, How He loves …
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