Reset & Minimize

Acts 20:²⁴ “I consider my life worth nothing to me, if only I may complete the race and finish the task that the Lord Jesus has given me—the task of testifying to the gospel of God’s grace.” (NIV, emphasis added)

This was Paul speaking, and he was saying, “I don’t consider what I am losing, what I have lost, or what I have to go through. If only I can complete and finish the race, the task that was given to me”. No wonder at the end of his life Paul said in 2 Timothy 4:⁷, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, and I have kept the faith.” (NIV, emphasis added). The King James Version puts it this way, “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith” (emphasis added). The faith is communal. We all have to keep the faith. It is the same for all of us. But the race is personal; you have to finish your own race.

Remember, we only get the highest power when we are doing the greatest tasks. Do you want your system to work optimally? Reboot! Do you want your life to be in top shape? Reboot! To reboot, the first thing you need to do is reset your Kingdom priorities. When it comes to rebooting, and this is something only the IT people know. When it comes to rebooting, once the normal person reboots the system, power cycles it, that is all. But when the IT person gets there, he doesn’t only power cycle the system. He also checks what background services and apps are running on that system. So, he is able to evaluate and then remove unnecessary services.

In fact, if he goes deep enough, he will find viruses that have preloaded themselves in memory. So, he will run the antivirus. Some antiviruses remove the virus registry, fingerprints, and all that. But they will not remove the viruses that load stealthily into memory. As the IT person, you remove that. How does that apply to you? To reboot, it means you Minimize Distractions (remove distractions). When you load your computer, there may not be any applications loaded, but these apps have loaded themselves in the background already. And they are already running in the background, taking up memory and processor space, and clogging your bandwidth. Some are already sending messages, if it is a Trojan attack.

There are many things that are preloaded in our subconscious and in our lives that we need to get rid of or, at best, minimize. They are distractions, distracting your system from doing the best work that you want it to do, distracting your life. 1 Corinthians 7:³⁵ “…do whatever will help you serve the Lord best, with as few distractions as possible.” (emphasis added). The way life is structured, you can’t remove all distractions. But you can live with as few as possible. Even the ones you don’t see are there, distracting you. But they are not major.

Prayer: Father, as I reboot my life this season, help me to remove every unnecessary thing, minimize distractions, and run my own race, in the Name of Jesus. Amen!