Intentional Living 101: Back to the Basics

The ant, the cricket, the slug and the grasshopper

Living an intentional life in Christ is like learning to play the piano. You learn best as you go back and practice the basics to better understand your art.  

Have you ever shopped at Ikea? For those of you who are not familiar with Ikea, it’s a store that has almost anything you want for your house and their products come from Sweden. 

Everything you buy from Ikea comes with instructions in pictures that demonstrate how to use it or put it together. Donna bought two little potholders during our last visit. And there were two tags attached to each potholder. I ripped them off and saw instructions on how to use a potholder in 25 different languages! I chuckled reading them, and I’ll share them with you. 

• The potholder is designed to be used for protection against thermal risk … (Meaning, don’t burn yourself.) 
• Associated with removing hot items off the hubs. (That’s a stove.) 
• Used in domestic environment. 
• Intended to be used in a dry condition. (Don’t take your potholder to the pool.) 
• The potholder should be inspected prior to each use, and damaged potholders should be replaced.

I’m sure IKEA’s attorney advised them to provide instructions. And it’s a great illustration of how we can take something that’s pretty obvious in life and make it more complex. And because we can often do that, it’s a reason why it’s important to revisit the basics of Intentional Living. 

Fred Rogers, an American television host, author, producer and Presbyterian minister best known as Mister Rogers, the creator and host of the preschool television series, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, that aired from 1968 to 2001, said, “Deep and simple are far, far more important than shallow and complicated and fancy.” 

If we’re a follower of Christ, one of our goals in life should be to figure out what pleases Him to bring glory to Him and benefit to ourselves. (Ephesians 5:10). 

There are two basic ingredients to an intentional life in Christ. 

1. Understand what God’s intention is. 

An intention is the fuel that drives you to move toward the passion you have. It’s the heart part – the internal part. It’s the grand edict of the hopes and dreams you have for your life. Goals tend to focus on where you’re headed. Goals ask, “What’s the destination? How do I get there? What’s the measurement? While the intention is something in you. 

Your passion drives you to good or bad things. 

      2. Take daily action. 

Daily actions are your actions or the follow through. 

Many of us have goals. To get up in the morning is to have a goal. Unfortunately, some people live with what I call “orphan goals,” goals floating around, not connected to any action or follow through. 

Intentional Living is really at the intersection of intention and daily action.

The ant serves as sort of a mascot for Intentional Living. Proverbs 6:6-8 says, “Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest” (NIV).

The ant provides us with a picture of what an intentional life is all about. I researched ants and discovered they have the largest brain of all insects. And I found out that ant intelligence does not reside in the individual, but in the group. 

That reminded me of Ecclesiastes 4:9-10, where we’re told that two are better than one because they have a good return for their work. 

When we’re together in community, we have strength. 

• Within our Intentional Living community, we have thousands of people around the country who are praying, working and moving together toward an intentional life in Christ. 
• If you’re in a business, you know a team is stronger than just one individual. 

So, the ant that you see pictured is always an example to us of what an intentional life is about. But when intention is met with inaction, we move into “Good Intentions” quadrant. 

Examples of good intentions are to – 

• Be a better husband.
• Watch what I eat today.
• Spend time in God’s Word.

When that good intention is met with inaction, it becomes procrastination.

And procrastination can destroy your life. A woman I talked to on my radio program said her husband had a good intention to finish a bathroom project. He hadn’t finished it, and she was frustrated. I tried to encourage her by saying, “It takes time to do it.” 

She said to me, “Oh yeah, well, he’s been working on it for nine years.” That’s a good intention that can damage a relationship – a good intention that led to procrastination and not following through. 

What about not finishing a commitment, not following through on your intention for being a good parent or not finishing your journey to follow Christ.

The poet, publisher, playwright and literary critic, T.S. Elliot said, 

“Most of the evil in the world is done by people with good intentions.”

It’s not following through that allows procrastination to keep you from doing what needs to get done.

• If you wanted to write a book and wrote just one page a day, that would be 365 pages in a year.
• If you were to take ten minutes every day and speak into the life of each of your children, that would be hours of investment into your kids at the end of a year. 
• If you cut back a little bit every day from eating things that are not healthy for you, over a period of a year that would represent thousands of calories and maybe other negative things from getting into your body. 

You can avoid procrastination by following through to do the next right, one thing.

The unintentional life is like the cricket, making a lot of noise. You have to pay attention to a cricket, but when you get close to it to challenge it, it goes silent. That’s true of some of us as well. It’s not so much about what we brag about what we want to do, but it’s actually taking time to follow through.

You see the upper quadrant in the image above, the intentional life is where intention meets daily action. Below that is procrastination, the unintentional life where inaction meets a good intention – something you want to do. 

An unintentional life occurs when you don’t have an intention tied to your actions.

You’re busy; you may have good habits and get a lot of things done. You may be successful in the eyes of the world. You may even feel successful at the end of the day. You probably have had those moments where you sit alone and reflect on what you’re doing. But in the busyness of the day you think – 

• Where is this taking me? 
• What is this attached to? Is it tied to my goals? 
• Is it really tied to God’s intention for my life? 

And an unintentional life, in many ways, can be as dangerous as a good intentioned life. It can be masked with a lot of activity. 

So, if you’re finding yourself asking questions like: 

• Why am I here? 
• I’m busy, but is it taking me where I need to go? 

• Is God really getting the glory from what I do in my life?

• Is my family truly benefiting in the things that are most important? 

• Are the important things actually being accomplished in my life?

If you can’t really answer those questions in the affirmative, ask yourself, Do I tend to live in the quadrant of busy, with a lot of daily actions on a checklist – things I’m following through with, but they’re not truly tied to those deep intentions of my heart, or the intention that God has for me?

This leads to wear. Now, I’m not talking about feeling tired, because if you’re doing good things – busy things for God, things that you know are intentional – you’re going to be tired. But there’s a time of wear, where you just feel completely drained, questioning if the energy that you’re giving is taking you in the direction you want to go or the direction that God wants you to go. 

We use the grasshopper to represent the unintentional life. The grasshopper is very busy. We had some grasshoppers in our backyard the other day. When you get near them, they’ll jump off onto another leaf or another tree. They move over here or over there, without what seems to be any direction. They go to the right and then they go left. Can you imagine doing that all day? 

When you lack intentional thinking or take no daily action, you live in the quadrant of no intentions. You’re stuck. This becomes the quiet, where you get really tuned out from life. The slug serves as an example in this quadrant. 

The four quadrants:

1. The intentional life.
2. The unintentional life.
3. The good intentioned life. 
4. The life of no intentions.

I recognize that when it comes to the five essential areas of life (faith, relationships, health, finances and work), you might be very intentional in some of the areas, while unintentional in others. You might have passion to be very intentional with your family. You know what God’s intentions are for your family and for your marriage, and you’re following through every day. You’re paying attention to that essential area, but in another essential area – the workplace, for example – you’re living a rather unintentional life.

It’s important to understand this thing of Intentional Living and these four different quadrants that we can live in, to examine where you are as it relates to each of them. I challenge you to take a little quiz and identify where you reside within the quadrants as it pertains to each essential area.

• Where is your faith today? 
• Which quadrant reflects where you are when it comes to your family? 
• Which one are you in today when it comes to your finances? 
• Your health? 
• Your work? 

It becomes pretty clear where your being intentional and where you need to be more intentional so you can bring glory to God and benefit to yourself. 

Hebrews 4:12 says, “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (ESV).

You’re going to discover God’s intentions when you get into His word, pray, meditate on His truth, receive godly counsel, and consider if how you’re living today lines up with what the Scripture teaches. 

I hope you will sit down, open your Bible and spend some time studying what God’s word teaches about these essential areas.

BONUS TEACHING FOR EXCLUSIVE MEMBERS!  

Please enjoy this month’s bonus video “Intentional Prayer.”

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