Sam Walton was partial to Moon Pies. This morning's Wall Street Journal reports that he did something about his snack preference--he made them his personal VPI. In Wal-Mart Speak, that means Value Producing Item...We all have our VPIs...God has his personal VPIs as well. If your computer screen were a mirror, you'd be looking at one right now.

It's a dog-eat-dog, general manager-eat-coach world out there. When you're judged by perfection, perfection usually wins. Most of us know the feeling. As the Bible says, "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23).

The role of women in national leadership has changed dramatically in my lifetime...Such equality of significance is nothing new to the Christian worldview.

We know more about the future than ever before, or at least we think we do. We have tests to tell us the gender and even eye color of our children nearly the moment they're conceived. Aptitude tests gauge our expected success at a college, major, or company. We know more about extending life than any society ever has. And yet all our diagnostic tools and prognosticating expertise doesn't seem to have made us any happier. We are living longer, but are we living better?

Your Maker...thinks about you more often than the number of grains of sand in the world (Psalm 139:17-18). (One mathematician calculates that number as 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.) He's thinking about you this very moment.

We are learning to discern God's will and purpose for our lives and problems, following Romans 12:1-2 as our guide. We have discovered four steps into significance: make Christ your Savior; put God on the throne of your heart; refuse the world's influence; and seek the mind of the Father in prayer and Scripture. What happens to those who take these steps each day?

In this era of daily terror threats and shifting economic trends, how do we know God's will for the practical decisions and challenges of our lives? As we have seen, Romans 12:1-2 offers us the crucial steps which lead to God's purpose for his people.

In this day of leadership challenges, with a shifting global economy and political uncertainty on every hand, it is encouraging to know that God has a plan for our lives and direction for our future. Where do you most need his guidance this morning? How can you know his will in that specific area of your life?

Today leaders make decisions if they do nothing else. Good ones and bad ones determine their success and legacy (just ask Carly Fiorina). So yesterday we asked the vital question: how do we know God's will for our lives, our part in his purpose?

26 centuries ago, a wandering Greek philosopher and singer named Orpheus got the idea that our "souls" existed in some preincarnate state before they were imprisoned in our bodies as punishment for their "sins." The goal of life, he argued, was to purify our personal souls so they can return to their previous blissful state.