Don’t let a situation dictate your reaction.
You choose how to respond.
You decide what words you speak.
You choose how you do your work.
You can’t always choose what you do but you can always choose how you act doing it.
“Well-spoken words bring satisfaction; well-done work has its own reward.”
Proverbs 12:14 MSG
Before your day even begins, get with God and choose together how you will react to the wide world you live in.
Prayer is a retreat.
A retreat from the world and the battles you fight in it.
The word “retreat” is a military term. It means to get off the battlefield, to quit fighting, back out and regroup.
Prayer is creating time with God to regroup, reassess, restrategize and recover.
“May God look you full in the face and make you prosper”.
Numbers 6:26 MSG
The word for “prosper” here in the original Hebrew is “shalom” and often translated as peace. Shalom is the peace that comes after the conflict and the quietness that comes after the chaos.
At its core, “Shalom” means the type of wholeness that comes after being broken.
Fighting a battle when you’re exhausted, wounded and discouraged never works.
Are you exhausted, wounded, or discouraged?
Then it is time to pray.
To take a step back, find a quiet place with God so He can repair what is broken, remind you of His purpose and arm you with His vision.
Jesus has given you full access to God’s presence.
Enter in and rest.
He is waiting for you.
My prayer is that you would get off the battlefield for a while and allow God to love you to wholeness.
Stay there as long as you need to.
What narrative plays in the background of your life that fuels your choices and drives your focus?
Is it an old story or your new one in Christ?
Jesus came to change your story.
God has called you to live a different story than the one that was handed down to you from your parents or the world.
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”
2 Corinthians 5:17 NIV
It’s a new way of living, of thinking, of being.
It is a new story with a new ending.
Sometimes you may revert to your old ways, old why’s, the old dialogue, the old labels, old mode of operation but every day is a new day to learn how to live with a new narrative- God’s.
In Christ, you have everything you need to live a new one.
This is not a once-in-a-lifetime change, it is an every-day-opportunity-to-do-it-differently, and learn-to-live-by-the-grace-of-Jesus change.
Take a moment…take a deep breath, and remember you have a new story to live today.
Leave the old one at the cross and embrace the new one with the help of the Holy Spirit.
Whose story are you living?
Your faith in God is more precious than the finest of gold. It will last longer than your job, your goals and your body. It is the eternal life inside of you that sustains you through the trials of the temporary outside life.
“But he knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold.”
Job 23:10 NIV
When God tests your faith it is to purify it. To clarify it. To clean it from dross and impurities. He will use the smallest irritation or the greatest trial to do it. He does not send the trial but He will use it.
The same fire that destroys wood purifies gold.
God can use the very thing that is destroying you to purify you.
He will use the disappointment you are experiencing to make the dross of your heart rise to the surface so He can skim it off.
You have a promise here that God knows where you are, what you are going through and that He knows how to use it to do a powerful work in you.
You will come out of it shining.
Hold onto God during this season because He is most certainly holding onto you.
Today I want to challenge you to break through the self-imposed limitations you have placed on yourself.
Don’t settle into a place of complacency or sink under the dark cloud of “things will never change”. Neither are from God. In fact, Jesus came to transform how you think and challenge how you see yourself and your future.
“My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the LORD. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine.”
Isaiah 55:8 NLT
Jesus came to give you direct access to a divine perspective founded in unrelenting love and sealed by unbelievable sacrifice.
When you connect to God through Christ, every accepted limitation you have in your life is challenged.
“Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think.”
Romans 12:2 NLT
It starts in the mind. God wants to change the way you think.
He wants to challenge your accepted life patterns and limiting thought patterns.
When Jesus challenges how you think, He is challenging how you trust.
He is asking you to follow him into a new place, new ways and a new future that is beyond your capability to comprehend.
What limitation is God challenging you to bust through?
What thought patterns are you living with that are not from God?
What is God asking you to trust Him with today?
Be brave, lose the limitations.
You don’t have to be brave unless you are facing something that requires it.
Being brave means that you are facing something that requires more than a step of faith, it requires a walk of faith.
It means not making your decisions based on what is but on what can be.
Being brave means getting up every morning and keeping your word when you don’t want to. Stating your boundaries and holding to them even when you don’t feel like it.
Choosing to believe new truths instead of old lies every day.
That is being brave.
“I’ll be with you. I won’t give up on you; I won’t leave you. Strength! Courage!”
Joshua 1:9 MSG
Keep going.
Keep believing.
Keep holding onto Jesus.
God will give you what you need right now to fight the battle before you.
“He trains my hands for battle; my arms can bend a bow of bronze. You make your saving help my shield, and your right hand sustains me; your help has made me great.”
Psalm 18:34-35 NIV
My prayer for you today is that you would know His love as He pours His strength into you. That you would know His peace as you lean on Him. That you would rest in God’s grace as you walk by His guidance. That you would trust Him with the future and focus simply on the task before you. That you would be released from the restlessness within you as you receive a new determination to go forward in faith.
You are stronger than you know because you know where your strength comes from and whose Right Hand sustains you.
