If you’re a born-again believer, the only purpose of your life is either to prepare to preach and teach the Word (like Jesus was doing in Nazareth), or to be preaching and teaching the Word (like Jesus was doing in his ministry years). There is no other reason why you’re here.

The devil will do everything he can to prevent you from doing this. In particular, he’ll work through people to sidetrack you and keep you from your mission. He does this first by not letting you realize your purpose in life, and then by throwing temptation after temptation after temptation at you. These come in the form of jobs, relationships, money, ambitions, hobbies, and other “cares of this world”. God’s mission is to get us to come to him and rely on him and to equip us to guide others to him, while the devil’s mission is to get us to reject or sideline God, to rely on the world, and to get us into a state where we’ll be unable to guide others to God.

Look at your life now. Are you either preparing to teach and preach the Word or actually doing it? If not, why not? Who or what is stopping you?

The truth is, if you’re neither preparing to preach and teach the Word nor actually doing it, the only one stopping you is yourself. The devil can only tempt you; he can’t force you to do one thing or another.

Time can either be your best friend or worst enemy. If it’s your friend, it’s working on your side to support your efforts either to prepare to carry out your sole purpose in life or to actually do it. You’ll know time is working on your side when you don’t have a sense of panic that you’re running out of time. You’ll instead have a sense that everything is right where it needs to be, that you’re right where you need to be, and that everything is unfolding as it should, in God’s time.

When time is your enemy, you live in a perpetual state of panic, always feeling as if the day is too short and the mountain of tasks ahead of you too high. You can’t see over it. Your panic usually manifests as a sense of frustration. Think Martha, when she was petulantly demanding Jesus to tell Mary to help her with the housework.

Think Jesus’ response.

We have only one mission in our lives as born-again believers – nothing else should matter to us, and nothing else should take our time. Either we should be like Mary, sitting at Jesus’ feet and learning about the Kingdom, or we should be like Jesus, preaching and teaching the Word.

Which are you?