Where Is Our Focus?

I was talking to a young man some time ago, and in the course our convesation , I told him, "If you do anything, pick just 2 or 3 things that you want to accomplish in life, and stick to them." These words are easier said than done for me. As I work 8 hours at my day job and spend much of the rest of my time with the family, or maintaining our finances, I still find time to practice some guitar and write a little bit. Additionally, I fit in study time for some ministry. But these interests and duties, I perceive, are unfocused pursuits that need to be evaluated in the light of God's Word to do all to the glory of God, and require a more disciplined and biblical approach to my intellectual pursuits.
The current reading from James W. Sire's book, Habits of the Mind: Intellectual life as a Christian calling, has led me to consider Sire's proposition as to what it means to be intellectual and how to use the intellect; he comes to the place where he lays out the uniquenes of being a Christian intellect, "A Christian intellectual is everything an intellectual proper is but to the glory of God." Sire points out that Christian thinkers have a passion not just for thinking, but for a passion for holiness which is the glory of God. The greatest expression of the holiness in God in man was in the person of Jesus Christ, and furthermore, a passion to glorify God is a passion to be like Christ, and this includes the desire for God to remake us through "gradual means, the means of grace. . . ." I believe Sire rightly notes, "A passion for holiness will therefore result in a passion not only to know the truth, but to do the truth." [E. Michael Jones, Degenerate Moderns: Modernity as Rationalized Sexual Misbehavior (San Franciso: Ignatius, 1993)]; there is an unbreakable link between knowing and doing. Even so, we still struggle. We experience the frustration of desiring to what we know is right and no doing it; and, what I hate, that I do. (Romans 7:14-25). Paul's description discrepancy between orthodoxy and orthopraxy is where we observe our inability to glorify God. How shall we then focus our attention upon glorifying God in all that we do when we are plagued by this struggle between what we believe and what we do? The answer is found submission to the Holy Spirit in two parts: first, in aspiration to setting our minds on the things of the Spirit (Prov. 23:7; Pil. 4:8), and second, in mortifying the deeds of the body by the power of the Spirt (Rom. 8:13; Col 3:5). Spirit God's work in our life is sanctifying to our mind and to our practice as He uses the means of prayer, the minstry of the Word of God, worship, fellowship of the saints, and communion to grow us in grace intellectually and practically. Let us seek to serve the Lord our God with all our heart, mind and strength. Amen!