What gives you life?

I was once asked to consider what gives me life? These are the answers.

1. Family: They breathe life into me when I’m at my lowest. They sacrifice for me, and they always have.
2. Writing: I’m most alive when I’m sitting in front of a laptop or whatever and creating something, sometimes a new sentence, sometimes a new way of expressing something very old that hasn’t been done in exactly the way I’ve written it. Using the writing to put someone in a place they only had heard about but never visited. It is what I’m most at home with.
3. Preaching: Nothing I’ve ever experienced is like the feeling I have when it works, when I know I’m connecting with those I’ve tried so hard to connect with. I enjoy the preparation, the research, the writing, taking the writing and trying to say what I’ve written in a clear, concise manner despite my accent and my limitations. Knowing that what is happening is truly of God and not myself.
4. Doing missional work
5. Jesus. Just Jesus. 
6. Grace beyond measure or explanation.
7. Friendships, new and old as time.
8. Sports, win or lose.
9. Reading, any and all things.
10. Pets, and/or animals of all kinds.

Think this question through for yourself. What gives you life? What makes you tick? What is enjoyable above all things. What would you do even if you weren't paid to do it?

It is those things that separate us, I think, from who we are and who we want to be. 

Today's scripture at bible gateway.com says this: Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind.

Let the answers to the questions above move you to have encouragement. Everyone has something that gives them life, excites them, makes them long for the next day. What is yours?