Hi how are you all today? I am well. I have had a very busy week with work, serving at youth formal, chores around the house, practicing in the choir for Christmas production and serving in church. How was your week?
In this post, I want to pose a question to all of us. Are we coping with life or thriving in life? Are we living the abundant life Jesus came to give us like He spoke in John 10? Are we living just life or even feel like our life is less than?
If you are feeling overwhelmed by life, I want to encourage you today that it can change. Often we feel overwhelmed for a couple of reasons. They are:
- We are doing things God never called us to do but people did.
- We don’t have systems in place to help us in our day to day.
- We are not spending time with God.
- We are allowing others to run our life not God.
So how do we fix these things so we are not merely coping but thriving. I believe Romans 12 can give us the answers. Here is the passage from verse 1 to 3 in the Message Bible:
1-2 So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you
Let’s look at the keys here.
- The first key is God helping you. This is the first and foremost key. I find in my life that when I give God time before I start my daily chores, then they seem to be completed much quicker and easier. There is no stress involved. It’s like God carries you through the mundane.
- The second key is when the verse states “take your everyday, ordinary life”. The Christian life is not going to always be filled with signs, wonders, miracle and excitement. Most of the time it is going to require us to live in the everyday and ordinary. But if we allow God to help us, there may be those moments of amazement.
- The third key is that God does not want our everyday ordinary life to be mundane but to be placed before Him as an offering. It is praying, “God I have all of these things to do today, help me to accomplish what you want me to do and if you want to interrupt my to do list, I give you permission. I am laying my day down for your glory”. God does not want us lazy in our work but He wants to be involved. If we get interrupted by a phone call, then see it as a gift from God instead of a bad interruption.
- The fourth key is to not become so well adjusted to the culture around us that we fit into it. What is the culture around us?
It is found in 1 John 2:16 to 17 and in the Message Bible states:
15-17 Don’t love the world’s ways. Don’t love the world’s goods. Love of the world squeezes out love for the Father. Practically everything that goes on in the world—wanting your own way, wanting everything for yourself, wanting to appear important—has nothing to do with the Father. It just isolates you from him. The world and all its wanting, wanting, wanting is on the way out—but whoever does what God wants is set for eternity.
The culture of the world is wanting everything our way, wanting everything the world has to offer and feeling important.
Too often our stressors in life come from too much stuff to keep up with others and feel important. But it is the stuff that is keeping us from thriving. Too many things to do, too much to take care of and too little money cause many of us to just cope, not thrive. Jump off this treadmill, seek God and find out what fits you and your family.
5. The last key is that God wants to bring the best out of you and mature you in Him. God desires for you to thrive and to live a life that is full. He wants you to fulfil the purpose and plan He has for you and not get bogged down in worldly things.
God desires for His sons and daughters to prosper but not so we can only cope but so that we can example what it means to live a Godly life. This is a life full of loving God, loving others and purpose.
This week take a stocktake of your life and bring it before God. Don’t just think you need to go through life coping but today I want you to know that thriving is possible. You can do it, with God.
Bless you and keep living the life God intended for you.
Karen
0 Comments