Christian Concepts

Bringing your Potential to Light

Growth

Are You Addicted to God?

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What is your ‘why’ that drives you out of bed every morning? If you’re relying on something other than God and His calling, you’re missing out on God’s best.

I spent the first twenty years of my life on the outside looking for some sense of meaning. I was desperate to find something more powerful than the emptiness of day-to-day life. When I became a Christian at twenty, I finally found my answer.

You can do better than what the world has to offer. You can start each day with motivation that originates from deep within you.

You can do better than caffeine

Caffeine stimulates, but it doesn’t connect you to your Creator.

Everyone has a purpose. Some people are aware of their calling. But too few invest the continuous effort required to reject the lies the world offers and grow into their God-given identity. Play the long game.

Playing the long game means looking at life with long-range vision. What is happening today is never the end, but only the beginning. Each day has its purpose but also builds towards a bigger plan tomorrow.

You can do better than boring

Life is boring without God. But God’s plan unfolds in new ways every second of the day.

God didn’t waste a second of Jesus’s life. He had a purpose and a strategy for everything He accomplished. Jesus lived up to His identity and fulfilled His deepest longing. Now He calls you to find your passion and advance God’s kingdom.

To advance God’s kingdom, you must be connected to Jesus. Apart from Him, you can’t accomplish anything of spiritual worth (John 15:5). When you are enlightened by God’s Spirit, you have the power to advance God’s purposes.

You can do better than random

Life is mysterious. God doesn’t reveal everything about His plans, but He wants you to seek and find spiritual insight.

God knew you before you were born. You have a destiny to pursue. Your identity doesn’t change, but how you see yourself changes over your lifetime. Pursue your identity and enjoy abundant life.

Abundant life comes from participating with God in His work. You can’t have life to the fullest without participating in spiritual growth. God’s plan for your life involves your spiritual growth and helping others with their spiritual growth.

You can do better than worrying

Short-term solutions provide a false hope. Then, you’re back to worrying about where to find your next fix.

God is the perfect fit for the receptors in your brain. He’s better than drugs or medicine. When you’re connected to Him, you experience a transcendent peace. God wired you to connect with Him.

Don’t be afraid to ask God to speak encouragement to you. I don’t always feel great about life. There are plenty of distractions. When you feel discouraged, that’s a perfect time to revisit your ‘why’. Ask God why you should continue when life isn’t going the way you hoped it would.

You can have passion for living and become unstoppable

Being addicted to God means you have at least tasted that God is good (Psalm 34:8). Life can be challenging. You won’t be able to do everything right all the time. But in your heart you know you can return to God’s goodness. Once you’ve tasted God, you realize nothing else comes close to satisfying like He does.

Are you waking up to who God is? Can you see His reality?

You are unstoppable because you have access to God at all times. God’s kingdom is real and your participation counts.

Tomorrow morning when you wake up, think about what motivates you to keep doing what you need to do. Can you sense what is at stake if you give up?

Many things satisfy earthy desires. These aren’t necessarily wrong. But…

You can do better.

God, awaken our spiritual senses to You. Reveal more of who you are. Help us not forget there’s more to this life than we can see.

Image by Myriam Zilles from Pixabay

4 Breathtaking Ways God Responds To Pain

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Pain in this life up until heaven is inevitable. When times are good it’s easy to forget that and instead expect life to be pain-free. Then, God becomes the bad guy.

Job and Jonah learned this but in different ways. Job had an exceptionally good life, then he lost nearly everything, then he regained happy circumstances. He knew what it is like to see painfully dramatic shifts in his fortune.

Jonah’s life was average; he was neither rich nor poor. But at least he had a relationship with God; he knew God’s forgiveness. Yet, he apparently didn’t remember what it was like to be a recipient of God’s mercy. Or, at least he didn’t want to see people, who he thought didn’t deserve it, be given the opportunity to receive it.

At the end of Jonah (chapter 4), God demonstrates to Jonah the value of caring about others who are less fortunate. Jonah is sensitive to God’s blessing (the plant) the God’s removal of blessing (the plant dying). It’s normal to be sensitive, but God wants us to learn how to distribute our concern equally between ourselves and others.

Some people are overly concerned about themselves to the neglect of others. While some others focus too much on others’ needs, ignoring their own needs.

When the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain required to change, you become sufficiently motivated to grow. If you’re blocking the pain, you’re holding back your growth. If you’re experiencing more pain than you can handle, you’re too isolated from love.

To be able to tolerate life’s misfortunes, you need God. God is love; only He can cause pain to become relatively insignificant when compared with our futures in heaven (Romans 8:18).

I believe Peter was speaking from his experience of denying Christ (John 18:17, 25–27) and being reaffirmed as a chosen disciple when he wrote this verse:

And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.

1 Peter 5:10 ESV

1. Restoring Minimizes Pain

Restore means to return to a former condition, place, or position. God wants you to have what you have lost. This doesn’t mean you will receive exactly the same as what you lost (Job didn’t). But God wants you to move forward according to the plans He has for you.

2. Confirming Minimizes Pain

Confirm means to make it publicly valid. What happens in your life should be relevant to other people in your life. We celebrate and mourn together, not alone.

3. Strengthening Minimizes Pain

Strengthen means to support, increase, and reinforce. If you are going to move beyond pain, you need God’s strength. Pay attention to how God is developing your ability to complete His plans.

4. Establishing Minimizes Pain

Establish means to achieve permanent acceptance. When God establishes you, He does not have plans for you to run away (like Jonah). He is appointing you to accomplish His work.

Notice the progression. Restore and confirm recover what was lost. God wants to heal you. But strengthen and establish go beyond the unimaginable. When God establishes you, you’re permanently accepted. God has called you to eternal glory. You can’t get more permanently accepted than that.

God does all of this because He cares. Whenever you experience suffering, you always have a choice to turn away from God or to turn toward God. Peter experienced God restoring, confirming, strengthening, and establishing him (John 21:15-17). You can, too!

Read more about pain.
Image by Alexa from Pixabay
Last updated September 18, 2022