Yesterday was one of those days where everything went wrong. I woke up late, forced myself to hit the gym solo at 7:00am, forgot I had a two hour meeting that cut into my scheduled study time, the meeting times got changed over and over, I didn’t have petrol money, the microwave died on me, I spilt ketchup on my favourite jumper, was late to the meeting, didn’t study enough, found out my phone bill was a whopping £100, went overdrawn with the bank… the whole day was a pain in the ass. That hasn’t happened to me in a while. It’s funny though, that such trivial things can make you feel like punching a hole in the nearest wall. I mean it wasn’t that bad was it?
Whenever I have days like that I remember this quote from a beloved mentor/pastor of mine. “The strength of a man is determined by how much it takes to discourage him”. I love how that challenges me. Especially when I’m in one of those moments; one of those “I hate the world!” moments and I get unnecessarily annoyed at people that are just trying to encourage me. It calls me to live to a standard that I have not yet managed to build my foundations upon. That place where you aren’t affected by your circumstances but instead, you consistently affect the atmosphere around you. And sure, we mostly understand this concept on an intellectual level but I think there’s a dynamic that we just don’t seem to see in how we live day-to-day. Our lives are consistently producing something. No matter the time of day or the activities we’re involved in. Your spirit never sleeps.
But often enough we only seem to pull out the big guns when life goes wrong. It takes a serious level of discomfort and threat for us to begin “doing the stuff” i.e. manifesting Heaven on earth and ensuring that God’s goodness is more dominant than the sinful junk around us. As soon as we feel comfortable again, our focus shifts to living life. We stop. And until the shit hits the fan again we don’t do anything more than what “is required” of us. Two of the most powerful things about DaddyGod to me are His consistency and the fact He is eternal. God never changes, but at the same time He is an eternal God and we will never experience the fullness of who He is. The four cherubim described in the book of revelation are worshipping in His throne room always singing “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God almighty!”, [I believe] because they are seeing a new side of His glory with each passing moment. He is constantly growing. That, to me, is NUTS! Totally blows me away.
And that’s what we’re called to - to growth. It’s our destiny to become more and more like an eternal God. Doesn’t that excite the crap out of you?! I love it! Our inheritance is so freaking BIG that we get to embrace and en-grain new aspects of God into the very essence of who we are, making it completely unique to our character and seeing it affects everything and everyone around us. AAAAHHH! Okay so I’m getting carried away, but hopefully you are getting this. It’s an every day thing. Not just when we get hit with temptation, confrontation or failure. We can grow more and more so that what it takes to discourage us is no longer trivial and our strength can extend into actually changing the world. We can love people beyond their differences and see God’s heart in the situations that hurt us. But this means we need to challenge ourselves. We need to see where we’re at, recognise the good, understand the lack and find out how we can grow more.
A lot of this comes down to your hunger for more. That hunger will compel you to ask God how you can do better, how you can love more sincerely, how you can step out and take the risks that scare you the most. Communicate with your God. Ask the Holy Spirit these questions. Listen. Act. And again, don’t be afraid of failure. Thomas Edison when asked why he didn’t quit after failing to make a light bulb 3,000 times said this, “I didn’t fail. I just discovered 3,000 ways NOT to make a light bulb”. There’s only one direction in the Kingdom - forward. Get steppin’!
No comments:
Post a Comment