Greetings fellow travelers on our metaphorical “Life is a Journey so what’s the Best Way to Travel?” adventure. We’ll invoke a little Navy lingo and conduct a SITREP (an acronym for Situation Report) to perform a quick review of the salient points we have covered in these last few weeks.

We started with some logical “If statements” about the existence of God, an eternal life, and the potential impact our current actions have on our future state. Through science, we pondered the primal cause of the existence of our universe to address the question, “Why are we here?” and we recognized there are but two choices: chance or design.

When we use basic probability and statistics, we find that the “chance” option takes the term “lucky” on a Star Trek journey boldly going where no one has gone calculated before. The odds are so infinitesimally small that we must leave our universe and create a multiverse—a multitude of universes to improve “chance” to a level of sufficiency to be even remotely considered plausible. It’s not just a handful of universes either–we’re talking something on the order of a googolplex multiverse–10 raised to the 100th power number of universes…just to give chance, well…a chance.

Time to get a bit snarky. For a rational mind to sincerely believe that our universe came into existence by chance, one must be either innumerate (the mathematical equivalent of illiterate), under the influence of extremely powerful hallucinogenic drugs, or in serious cognitive dissonance denial.

THERE IS A CREATOR!

Sorry, went down the rabbit hole a little deeper than I wanted on that point, but anyone who says they disbelieve in God because of science is simply disingenuous. Hey, just admit that you want to do your own thing and not answer to anyone or any God. At least that’s honest. Even the agnostic path is a fool’s bet. If we don’t know whether God exists, then choose to believe. At least you have, dare I say, a chance! Think it through. If God is not real, we all die anyway and the lights go out–the party’s over. But if God is real, then you win! Choosing to reject God guarantees that you lose!

OK, back to our SITREP. The next obvious question to consider was what kind of Creator do we have? Although, we did not perform a detailed proof, we focused on Jesus of Nazareth. He told us to follow Him and as His authority, He claimed to be God. He prophesied His death and resurrection and it came true just as He said. It is the most testified and documented event in all of antiquity. If you wish to prove Christianity wrong, prove that the miraculous resurrection event didn’t happen. Many have tried; none have succeeded.

In the last two blogs, we evaluated the strategic rules of the road and the reward system and associated Return on Investment (ROI) for following Jesus. What’s the optimum level of commitment should we have in following Christ? Is cascading through life in Christ’s general direction a good strategy or should we have a totally focused head/heart/hands approach? Finally, what defines success and how do we “score points”?

We concluded that all the rules and principles adhere to one verb–love. Love is the motivation for all action and the measuring stick for evaluating our success. Perhaps we could create a new word here–be loveful! We are to love God with all our heart, mind, body, soul, and strength and since Jesus is God, then we should go all in on following Him. Our mission in following Him is to obey His new command to love others as He loves us.

There you have it! Now, let’s close in prayer…

Well, praying is always good and the apostle Paul tells us to pray unceasingly (1 Thess 5:17) about everything (Phil 4:6), but now it’s time to get into the details of our most excellent journey! This is the fun part!

For the next five weeks–from now until Easter, we will review nine spiritual principles for having the best life journey possible. I call them the 9 P’s of travel. They answer the typical travel questions: Where are we going?, Why are we going?, How are we travelling?, What do I need to pack?, Who am I travelling with? etc.

Here’s a glimpse of the travel plan. We’ve discussed that the critical action and metric in our life’s journey is love–agape love–the attributes of this type of love is found in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8. The greatest commandment involves 3 loves–love God, love others, love self. This forms a love triangle that is the building block for the best individual life and best possible society. The 9 P’s describe 3 principles for each love. Jesus streamlined the greatest commandment with His new command to love others as He loves us. This changed the emphasis in the love triangle, but the triangle is still there. By loving others as Christ loves us, we demonstrate our love for God.

Now, I can really, really, really use your help on this. I would greatly appreciate any feedback, comments, suggestions, critiques that would improve the development of this travel plan. So, thanks for the comments so far on either this blog or on the Facebook page, but please share your thoughts, insights and relevant scripture verses!

So, as a teaser for coming attractions, when going on a journey you must know what to pack. In that mindset, get ready. Our first P is PREPARATION.