Living the life God intended

Hi how are you all? I am feeling much better after a couple of weeks of viruses which is great. The weather in my country is still hot and humid. I like it warm but do not like the humidity. It makes you feel tired and lazy. How are things in your country?

This week I want to talk about bitter or better. This is in relationship to when we receive news about our performance at work or some activity that we may have undertaken. We can receive a negative review or an activity we really liked to do could be cancelled forever.

My question is – how do we react in those circumstances? Do we grow bitter or better? Do we wallow in the bad news or do we allow ourselves to get upset for a moment and then wonder what’s next in store?

In times like these, God is more concerned about our response to the bad news then He is about the bad news?

I want to remind us all of something here. Peoples opinions don’t matter as long as we are doing a good job and the activity doesn’t matter if the season is over for it. If the person who delivered the bad news is wrong then it is God who they need to give account to.

The best story in the Bible regarding this is the story of King Saul and David. The story is found throughout 1 Samuel. Let’s look at King Saul first.

The Israelites wanted a king. So God picked out Saul to be their first king. This was a privilege and an honour. As the first king of Israel, Saul had the perfect opportunity to set up the kingdom like God wanted it. But instead of doing what God said, Saul listened to peoples unfavourable opinions, didn’t wait for the prophet Samuel and sacrificed when he shouldn’t have.

He also didn’t annihilate everyone and everything in one of the battles like God told him. Therefore, God rejected him as king and started to look for another.

Saul still held the position of king but didn’t have the counsel of God behind him to make right decisions.

Saul’s downfall was that the opinions of people and his popularity in front of people were more important than God. So he grew bitter not better. He didn’t allow God to continually work on him.

David, however was anointed king whilst Saul was still in power. He didn’t try to take the kingship off Saul as he knew that Saul was the one anointed by God for the role at that time. His turn would come.

David didn’t grow bitter in the wait. He trained up a misfit band of men for war, taught them how to honour the leader and follow him no matter what the situation looked like.

David grew better in the waiting and amidst his continual battle of King Saul trying to kill him. God grew his character, his skills, his obedience to God and his relationship with God. God used people such as Abigail to speak into his life at this time and confront him when he was going to make a bad choice.

So when bad situations come around our lives, are we going to allow them to make us bitter or are we going to allow God to work in our lives to make us better?

Our goal everyday should be to become more like Jesus and to move from glory to glory. It should not be to get bitter and take revenge. That is not what the love of God looks like.

So in this year of reimagining what your life could look like, how would it look if you allowed God to make it better? Just sit for a minute and imagine how different your life would be. Maybe you are in the better, but what would your life look like on the next level of better?

God wants us whole spirit, soul and body. Let’s reimagine our lives for the better.

Have a great week and keep living the life God intended for you.

Bless you

Karen