I am opening up this blog with some questions. Please answer the questions--even write your answers down on a piece of paper. Then as you read this blog take note of how you can achieve the desired answers.
Do you wish to feel more alive?
Do you want to be more concerned?
Would you like to feel more sensitve? And not numb from depression?
Do you really desire to act more reverently toward God?
What are you passionate about? What gets your heart pumping fast?
Are you doing what you should be doing, whatever that may be?
Answering these questions is meant to help you see where you are--inside. If your answers reveal that you do want these things then it means your life is not going in the right direction. You are saying that you are not satisfied with your life as it currently is, right?
What is distressing you at this very moment?
Did you write down the answer? It's important to identify the distressing factor because it is a necessary element to turning your life around. How's that?
2 Corinthians 7:10 (MSG): "Distress that drives us to God does that. It turns us around. It gets us back in the way of salvation." Usually the casual Christian talks to God only when they can't change the mess they are in. Are you the casusal Christian who does this? So what if you have a big distress or just a little distress. Both will work. Go to Holy Dad and tell Him your situation. Ask Him to help you go back to your new beginning, the new person He made you when you got saved. I know. It's hard letting yourself go and letting God have a lead role in your life but He knows that and that is what distresses are about. So use them to your advantage. Look at the result when you do: Verse 11: "And now, isn't it wonderful all the ways in which this distress has goaded you closer to God? You're more alive, more concerned, more sensitive, more reverent, more human, more passionate, more responsible."
Now let's go back to your new beginning, the time when you were saved. John 3:16 (MSG): "This is how much God loved the world: He gave His Son, His one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in Him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life." Did you hear the whole and lasting life part? Friend, you may not believe it--but this life is yours. The word "believing" means we trust and have confidence in Him. Do you remember what the definition of confidence is? Trust, reliance, assurance. Those attributes belong to God. He designed us to live with Him inside of us. And what about the Bible? Do you feel bad about your poor decisions and actions when you read it? So you don't read it because you don't want to feel bad about yourself? Verse 17 tells us: "God didn't go to all the trouble of sending His Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again." Friend, this word is to help you, not to hurt you. God is for you and not against you. He just wants you to have a wholesome life, a real life.
Are you still trying to do it own your own?
Do you feel like you are living a real life?
Are you satisfied wtih the way things are?
Did you know that depression, anxiety and self-hatred cause a person to be self-centered?
I hope you wrote your answers down. God says if you are doing it on your own then you are not living the way He designed you to live. Romans 8:5-8 (MSG): "Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God's actions in them find that God's Spirit is in them--living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absored in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what He is doing. And God isn't pleased at being ignored." You see friend, God knows how you operate. He knows that lots of bad feelings tangle us up inside ourselves. We try really hard to fix things. We try to redo the past. We try to change people's actions toward us (when in fact they have their own set of bad problems). But none of this works and God knows that. He wants to help you. Go ahead and ask Holy Dad to help you to stop focusing on yourself. Ask Him to help you focus on Him. He will be delighted to hear you ask for that! Ask God to help you trust His actions and to give you a peace that you just can't explain. Tell Him that you want to live that spacious, free life more than anything else in the world. And friend, ask Him to help you love Him with your total being and energies--even if you don't know how to do it. Trust me, He'll help you with that part because He wants very much for you to love Him with your everything.
Ok friend. Are you ready for wholesome living, a real life, spacious and free living? You answered my questions. Now let God answer the questions you asked Him.
Jesus' healing and peace to all, Wynndy
