As we close the door of the Air Force chapter and start the next in missions, one thing I've learned is so many things in life are a matter of the heart - and only God truly knows a man's heart. Money, success, retirement, missions, how we treat and see people, etc. I pray God keeps us from "prideful missions" or feeling like we're "really living for God" by leaving the Air Force. Proverbs 16:2 says, "All the ways of a man are pure in his own eyes, but the LORD weighs the spirit."
Where God is leading us now and where He leads us in the future is His plan, not ours, and we have no room for pride. Our missions team that is coming together is His working, not ours. The talents and abilities God has given us by His grace are not something we've created or built up on our own, He gave them to us. 1 Corinthians 4:7, "For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?" Our earthly possessions are ultimately His and we're stewards of them; God help us to live with open hands and allow you to give and take as you like!
Jesus stated we the we'd have to lose our life to find it and I pray for a heart that continues to care less and less about the temporal, earthly things and more about eternal things. Luke 12: 33b-24, "Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."
Augustine - "They, then, who are destined to die, need not be careful to inquire what death they are to die, but into what place death will usher them."
