The title of this blog is a rather hyper statement, isn’t it? But as you reflect on how an intentional life can save your life, you’ll see that statement is accurate. When you choose to have an intentional life, tied to the true purpose of your life and God’s intention, it can change your life.
A very wise person once said one of the things he observed while working with very successful people is that many of them tend to fade at the end of their life. They accomplish great things and get to whatever that mountain was that they were looking at, and then their life starts to fade.
As we get older, it’s possible to start losing interest in life. The things that seemed important at one point are not quite so significant anymore. Over time people often:
- Stop learning new things.
- Close off a particular part of their life.
- Simply do just enough to get by.
I used to think that it was only about age. You get older. You are tired and it gets harder. To a certain extent that’s true, but a lot of what is at work comes from the second law of thermal dynamics, which is the law of entropy.
Entropy is this, that systems tend to move from order to disorder.
If you’ve ever built a sandcastle on the beach, it looks great at first – everything is nice and orderly. But the waves come and the wind blows, and suddenly, it’s just a little pile of sand. That’s the law of entropy.
Or maybe you turn the furnace on in the house to bring the heat up a little bit, and then the temperature starts to drop shortly after it comes up to the mark you’ve set on the thermostat.
Entropy works in all systems in life including your:
- Marriage.
- Health.
- And spiritual life.
Anything left to itself will move toward disorder.
Isaiah 40:7-8 says, “The grass withers, the flower fades when the breath of the Lord blows on it; surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever” (ESV).
Even Scripture concludes we’re in a constant state of decay. You can see it in the relics of ancient history. When Donna and I were in Israel, we went to the sites where Jesus walked. Today, in many of those places only a pile of rubble or stones is left. And in what still stands, you can see the decay from order to disorder.
Your spiritual life can follow this same path. You can go from spiritual order, where you’re spending time with God and growing spiritually, and often move naturally to disorder and then to destruction.
Entropy began in the Garden of Eden. (Remember the lesson in Humpty Dumpty – all the king’s horses, all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again?) Genesis 3 puts it this way: “You start out as dirt, you’ll end up as dirt” (Genesis 3:19 MSG). It’s the word picture of entropy that occurs in all of our lives. We feel it physically, and we can see it occurring in the world around us.
According to the second law of dynamics, the only way to put things back in order is to add energy.
- If you want to put that sandcastle back together, you use physical energy to rebuild it. That’s the only way to do it.
- If you want to have a healthy body, you go for a walk, eat well and exercise.
- If you want to put your finances back in order, it takes planning – sitting down, putting things on paper and making decisions – doing something, eliminating something, selling something or working harder.
- If you don’t constantly invest in your marriage, your marriage will fall into disorder, decay and destruction. That’s why many times marriages fail. Other factors can also be involved, but clearly, left to their own devices, things tend to fall into this disorder.
As we get older, we tend to find it’s more difficult to do certain things because we have less energy to put into the things that are necessary to keep order in our lives. I think one of the reasons we see people fade is because there’s just not enough energy to do everything. I don’t know if you experience that, but I do at times.
For those of us who follow Christ, we can only put things back into order if we add the energy of the Holy Spirit into our lives.
We need to make sure that the power of the Holy Spirit is alive in us. I believe when we accept Christ, the Holy Spirit comes to reside in our lives. Scripture says in Ephesians 5:18, we are to be filled with the Spirit – allowing the Spirit of God to fill every part of our life.
If you allow the power of the Holy Spirit to fill your life, you may save your life, your marriage, your family or your spirit. You can save yourself a lot of misery in life, as opposed to allowing the physical law of entropy to take place. It’s something we have to continually fight.
Four Things You Can Do to Combat Entropy
- Decide.
It takes courage to say, “Things aren’t where they’re supposed to be. There’s some disorder in my life.”
It’s easier to do nothing and just let things fade. And we can fade to the point of no return. Have you ever watched someone give up? They don’t see any way out.
Satan thrives at the point of no return.
When people go through a divorce or have a personal failure, he’s just waiting to say, “Hey, let that entropy continue … just keep fading.” And some listen to him and choose to walk away instead of putting the right energy back into their marriage, their finances or whatever it is.
Our bodies are fading. And we’re not going to live forever physically. But as followers of Christ, when we die, He takes us to a new place with Him.
Although it’s easy for us to allow Satan to whisper into our ears at those points of no return, that’s not God’s intention for any of us.
2 Timothy 4:7 says, “I fought the good fight. I finished the race, and I kept the faith” (NIV). God’s intention is not for us to fade but to keep fighting to the end.
Philippians 1:6 says, “And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (ESV). It’s God’s intention for us is to fight the law of entropy.
Decide not to go down that path.
- Refuse to allow Satan to push you to give up.
- Keep moving forward.
- Trust God … which moves us to the second point of intentional living and that is to do something.
Whenever you feel like you’re fading, put the right kind of energy back into your life, starting spiritually, with the power of the Holy Spirit.
2. DO
Do something. If you find yourself drifting from God, put some energy back into your relationship with Him. Overcome inertia. Fight the tendency to stay in the state you’re in.
If you’re traveling down a losing path, don’t continue down that path because it’s easy. Get off that path. It takes energy to get into a treatment program if you have a drug problem. It takes energy to fix your marriage if it’s struggling. It requires energy to get some help and find out what is going on with your health if it’s failing.
Continue to take whatever energy God gives you and put it back into your life.
During a recent interview with Bill Gaither, I asked him, “What have you done to stay focused on what’s important?” He’s written over 700 gospel songs. He’s been a leader of Christian music in the old days and the mentor of most of the musicians we see today. He helped them get started.
Bill said, “When I was a young man getting out of college, we started to sing in little churches on the weekends, and people liked what we were doing. They would call and say, ‘Would you come here? Would you do this and that?’ Pretty soon we couldn’t do everything we were being asked to do.”
He continued, “Then I got a call from Montana from the radio program in Billings. ‘You got to come’ they said. ‘If you don’t come, you’re going to be responsible. People are going to go to hell if you don’t come.’ That’s a heavy trip. Right?”
He laughed a little bit, but his point was you have to know what the most important things are that you can do.
- Declutter
We can clutter our lives with so many things. It takes a lot more energy to keep everything you collected in your life together. I don’t mean just stuff. I’m talking about your thoughts, your relationships … everything.
We must simplify to know what’s truly important and stay focused on those things.
Bill Gaither is 86 years old. He’s stayed focused on the things that were most important – the things
God gave him to do in his life.
- Debrief
What does debrief mean? We each need to stop sometimes and ask, “How am I doing?” Maybe it’s the end of the week that works best for you. But sometime every week you should look back and ask:
- How did this week go?
- How am I doing?
- Am I staying focused on doing the right things?
- Is entropy overtaking my life?
- What do I need to put some energy into this next week?
Always start your debrief with gratitude. God has been so good. Every time Donna and I pray, I always say, “Lord. Thank you. We’re amazingly blessed.” Make sure your debrief starts with gratitude!
BONUS TEACHING FOR EXCLUSIVE MEMBERS!
This month’s bonus teaching is “Thriving Intentionally.”
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