Christian Concepts

Bringing your Potential to Light

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Play Is Essential To Being Your Best

Play Is Essential To Being Your Best

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Reading time: 3 minutes

When you rake leaves in your yard, is it fun or work? Your answer probably depends on your purpose. Your goal might be to play in the leaves. Or, it might be to make your yard look presentable when you’d rather be doing something more fun.

Children will spend hours raking leaves when they see it as fun. But tell them it’s a chore they have to do, and they’ll spend hours moving slowly and complaining about the job.

What is Play?

Play is a time-out from reality in order to better understand reality. Click To Tweet

In his classic book Homo Ludens, Johan Huizinga defined play as “a free activity standing quite consciously outside ‘ordinary’ life as being ‘not serious,’ but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It is an activity connected with no material interest, and no profit can be gained by it. It proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner.”

Play can be work you enjoy; if it becomes drudgery, it has become something else. Play is relaxing; if it becomes stressful, it has become something else. People choose to play; if it is forced, it has become something else. Play is a glimpse of heaven. If it involves sin (missing God’s ideal), it has become something else.

Play is Related to Purpose and Rest

Play is important because it allows you to connect with the reason God created you. Kids use their imagination to re-create (recreate, grow, build) their understanding of God, self, and life. Forgetting how to have fun is never a good thing. Perhaps the Sabbath is meant to be a time to have fun instead of working so hard.

If your life is all about work, you’ll see yourself as an object that others use. You lose your value. You believe what you want is irrelevant. With a worldview like this, you become only a shell of a person. You can become so focused on tasks that you no longer feel like a person.

One of my favorite things to do is install insulation in a hot attic. Just kidding! I’ve taken on this task a couple of times and it always triggers the thought, this must be what hell feels like. Isolation from people. Irritation from glass fibers. Extreme heat. Maybe insulating is better as a non-summer activity? I’d rather be raking leaves.

When work becomes the priority in life, you’ll lose touch with your true purpose and you’ll become depressed. That’s because you’re made for more than being a machine. Machines don’t have feelings; they tolerate meaningless repetition.

God made you to have fun. He made you to experience joy.

Different people will define “fun” differently. What is work to one, will be fun to another. There will even be different times when what was once work is play, or what was once play is work.

How Much Fun Are You (Having)?

Could you be experiencing depression or anxiety because you have a faulty view of life that emphasizes work over play? Maybe you didn’t become this way on purpose, but your life has changed slowly and now you’ve forgotten how to have fun.

Do a quick check of your current lifestyle.

How much of your life is work and how much is fun?
Has your “fun” turned into a chore?
When was the last time you let loose with an all-out belly laugh?
When was the last time you chose to be more extravagant than efficient?
What are you afraid will happen if you pursue more fun in your life?

Heaven is going to be like work that feels like play, not play that feels like work. Click To Tweet

With the right motivation, your work will honor God, but God also taught His people to have times of celebration and rest. See Luke 15:23-24 and Psalm 118:24.

So this week, will you be intentional about truly playing? Set some time aside for this ultimate way to enter God’s rest. You can’t reach God’s purpose for your life without play.

Read about desire fulfillment.
Image by Annie Spratt from Pixabay
Last updated June 25, 2023

Enter Rest to Feel God’s Pleasure

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Reading time: 3 minutes

During a full rest, you are able to perform at your highest level. You probably do your best work when you are relaxed and “in the zone.”

Have you experienced this kind of rest? Would you like to learn how to enter into the rest God intends for you?

God made you with a sweet spot-also called your identity. You put in your effort while relying on God to carry what you were never meant to carry (the bulk of the load).

Sometimes the sweet spot is elusive because of sin and the curse. Sometimes you have to do what you don’t particularly want to do. Overcoming the curse requires hard work. The goal isn’t to eliminate your effort, but instead to optimize your effort.

A sweet spot is that optimal place that maximizes output with the least effort. Hitting your sweet spot is an honorable goal. The center of the sweet spot is you functioning as God intends and feeling His pleasure. If you want to feel God’s pleasure, first you must be free to be yourself.

Do you know what it feels like to pursue what you want to instead of what you have to (because of obligation or responsibility)? God wants you to experience unpressured living at least one day out of seven. The lift you gain from one day of rest can carry into the other six days.

Who are you (how do you live) when you’re under obligation? This is how you fill your day to meet the demands of life. It’s required. So don’t miss this: You’re probably not optimally in touch with your true identity while under obligation. That’s because obligation implies some amount of stress and that changes everything.

Who are you (how do you live) when you’re not under any obligation? This is what you accomplish during productive play. This isn’t lower functioning (brain dead) activities that allow passive living. Restful living means entering into a natural high by functioning at the level of God’s highest purposes for you. This is true recreation-an effort that recovers more energy than it spends.

When you practice entering rest, it will help you when you are under the stress of responsibility. You’ll be able to work more efficiently when you are under stress.

Restful living will be different for each person. What activities bring you more energy as you participate in them?

In the movie, Chariots of Fire, Eric Liddell says, “When I run, I feel His pleasure.” Even though he’s exerting himself completely he has entered God’s rest. He’s burdened with running, but not burdened with debilitating anxieties.

Fulfilling obligations is necessary. But playing is as important as working. To play is to rest. Some people can’t stop working. Their play is only work in disguise.

When God’s power is available genuine play is possible. That’s because He does the heavy lifting. Jesus said:

Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Matthew 11:28-30

Have you ever felt God’s pleasure? You enter God’s rest and He is right there with you expressing His excitement for who you are. God is your cheerleader. Allow His cheers to propel you forward.

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The Paradox of Humility

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Reading time: 2 minutes

No one can claim they are the humblest person in the world with much credibility. But those of us who struggle with self-worth know that confidence is equally elusive.

Somehow though, confidence and humility are the same thing. If you are confident (but not arrogant), you’ll also be humble. And if you’re humble (but not engaging in false humility), you’ll also be confident.

Doesn’t that seem strange that appropriate confidence, the kind God wants us to have, is also a way to express humility? I mean strange in the sense that confident probably isn’t the first word that comes to mind when you think of humility. But how could it be any other way?

God who is all powerful clothed Himself with humanity. If there is a paradox, Jesus represents it perfectly.

To be strong doesn’t mean to be closed or unreachable. God’s strength is approachable. Jesus’s birth offers us the greatest hope possible.

We are creatures of habit. Once we know how to do something, we go on autopilot.

If you’ve ever experienced a negative, false belief about yourself, you know firsthand the intense struggle that is required to put off the false and put on the truth.

You can’t have confidence and humility without also having peace and joy.

Then Jesus said, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.”

Matthew 11:28-30 NLT

In your quest to become more confident and humble, remember that it feels like peace, joy, and rest. I bless you now with rest for your soul. Amen.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay