Roll up your sleeves

I heard this the other day and I have to agree with it. We do not change who God is because of who we are or what we believe however if we read God’s word and follow its principles God changes us. That is a powerful thought worthy of our meditation. How often is it that we bargain with God about the things in our lives? Dear God if you will do this and that then I will do whatever you ask of me. Are we really willing to do whatever God asks of us? Do we really mean what we are saying or are we fooling ourselves into believing that God does not know the intent of our heart when we say those things?

Our hope is in Christ and in who he is both to our world and in our lives personally. If we chose to believe that we are in control and that we determine the purpose of our lives then God is not in us. The truth of the matter is that we need God in our lives and we need his power, love, grace and mercy. The problem is that we are so busy with the things of this world that we choke out time with God that is so precious. Time with God gives us strength and hope and power. Only God can give us the peace that passes all understanding. Only God can restore us into his own image and make us more like him. God loves us without measure and he pursues us on a daily basis. God pursues us relentlessly. All we have to do is to slow down, take a deep breath and just listen.

Our lives are not our own. God gave us our lives so that we can live for Him and him alone. God has a purpose for our lives and that purpose is to love him and glorify him in all that we do and say. I want to encourage you to purpose in your heart to do something today that will give honor and glory to God in your life. One way that you can do that is to slow down and find time to spend with God. If you take the time to build a relationship with your creator he will bless you beyond measure. When you invest of yourself in anything you are usually blessed in return. How much time do we spend doing everything else but spending time with God? How much eternal reward will we get for doing those things?

Today I read something in my Values for Men devotional. It said this and I quote “Once we make the decision to trust God completely, it is time to get busy. The willingness to take action- even if the outcome of that action is uncertain- is an effective way to combat hopelessness. When you decide to roll up your sleeves and begin solving your own problems, you’ll feel empowered, and you may see the first real glimmer of hope.”

Those words really resonate within my life. I can not begin to tell you how many times in my life I have felt despair, depression and hopelessness because of the circumstances in my life. Some of these circumstances were things out of my control and some of them were there because of poor decisions in my life. No matter the reason the emotions were real and they were and are hard to deal with. Several years ago a dear friend of mine listened to me lament about how horrible and hopeless my credit rating was. I told this friend that this and that had happened in the past and that there was absolutely nothing that I could do to make this situation better. In my mind there was no hope and even thinking about the situation made me angry and depressed and despondent. I did not even want to hear that there is hope.

I am thankful that my friend was patient enough with me to listen and to allow me to have those feelings. My friend did not belittle my situation or tell me to get over it. What my friend told me was that they too had experienced these types of issues in their life and that there is hope at the end of the tunnel. One key ingredient of that hope was to have faith and believe that I could be a part of the solution and that doing nothing about it was the worse thing I could do. I do not know how long it took me to come around but somehow I chose to believe that there is hope and that I could do something about our credit problems. I chose to ignore the feelings of helplessness, hopelessness and despair. I chose to stop being a victim of my own feelings and to roll up my sleeves and do something.

The first thing I had to do was to educate myself about credit. What is credit, why is it important and how does it affect me and my family. Once I began to educate myself and to learn the things I needed to know I was empowering myself to take action. Knowledge is power but only if you apply the principles of that knowledge. You can apply that principle to Godly living. How can we live for God when we do not know what the instruction manual says? How many times have we purchased a new electronic gizmo and not know how to operate it? What is the first thing that most people do? They pick up the manual and learn how to do what they want to do with the new gizmo. That is exactly what we need to do with the Bible. We need to open up with the anticipation that God is going to show us how to be who he wants us to be. Once we do that he will open our eyes and illuminate himself and his will for our lives today.

Please allow me to encourage you to empower yourself and add quality and quantity to it by spending more time with God. How much time you spend with God will be up to you but I can tell you that you will never spend too much time. The more time you spend the more you will be blessed. God will restore your soul, give you direction for living and fill your heart with peace that you will not find anywhere else.

My God bless your richly as your purpose to pursue him today.

James Moffitt
http://www.lightourworld.com
jcmoffitt@gmail.com