“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” (Romans 12:1-2 MSG).
God wants to bring the best out of you and I want to make this statement…so do I. I want to take you on a journey of unlimited possibilities, to bring the best out of you. I believe this begins with you knowing God. Secondly, I believe the journey to bring the best out of you involves settling your yesterdays once and for all. I want you to find freedom and to discover your purpose so you can make a difference in this world. To do this, you need well-formed maturity.
You don’t have to do the impossible. You just have to do the difficult and God will do the impossible! If this is to be a year of unlimited possibilities, then you’re going to have to make a decision and create a habit of living a God-first life. Difficult yes, but then watch what God does!
Discover Your Purpose. Life will go better when you keep yourself in alignment with your purpose on this planet. Your life will never make sense and you’ll always have problems in other areas until you align your life around your purpose. Ps 139 says it beautifully, “You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed.”
We try, don’t we? However, each one of us has added a chapter to our book. And, if you’re like me, probably a few chapters! These are not chapters God wrote for us. Don’t lose hope. When we look to God for alignment, he has this unique ability to make the last chapter fit …no matter how many chapters you may have added in.
Live by design and not by default. Define it and design it. There is constant competition for our time and attention. Don’t allow other people or situations to decide your life for you. Today you are one day closer to the end of your life than you were yesterday. I’m your friend. I’m not an expert on the subject but I will tell you this, I personally believe we are living in the last days, maybe the last of the last days.There is no room for us to live a casual, no good, who cares kind of life. Today matters. This is the day that the Lord has made. Rejoice! Yesterday‘s over and tomorrow’s not here. Get today in alignment. You’ll really never change your life until you change the things that you do every day, the habits.
- Decide what is important.
A lot of our lives are being defined by what’s important, or urgent. There are a lot of things that we need to do, but they can’t dominate our lives. What are the most important things? “Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ” (Philippians 3:7-8 NLT). The only way you’ll ever know if life is really better when you put God first is to go all in and make a decision that you're going to put him first. If you’ve never tried this life, you have missed out on the best.
- Give calendar time to important things.
It is amazing how many people have values, but they don’t show up on their calendar. If you value it, you give it time and resources. Take time to fill your calendar with those things that are important. Ask for God to teach you in the ways of wisdom.
- Make time for renewal. You have got to refresh yourself. You’ve got to have a day where you slow yourself down. I promise you you will get more done in six days by giving one day to God and resting your spirit, soul, and body.
- Make time for relationships. The most important decisions of your life after your decision to serve God is going to be the people that you choose to spend your life with. More on this later!
- Make time for reward. Do something that will bring you heavenly rewards. Someday, you’re going to stand before God and part of my job is to make sure that you’re prepared for that final exam. He won’t have to ask if you belong to Christ. He will know the answer to that question. He will ask how much you leveraged the life that he gave you? It’s really important that you are living your life on purpose and making a difference.
- Eliminate the nonessentials.
A lot of us have nonessentials in our life and the secret is to eliminate as many of those things in our life that honestly just don’t belong. Eliminate those things that do not make your life better. Like Hebrew 12 says, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up. And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us” (Hebrews 12:1 NLT). Make a decision to eliminate these things if you want what you want at the end.
- Regularly take inventory.
Where is your life out of alignment? Pray this prayer from Psalm 39, ““Lord, remind me how brief my time on earth will be. Remind me that my days are numbered— how fleeting my life is. You have made my life no longer than the width of my hand. My entire lifetime is just a moment to you; at best, each of us is but a breath” (Psalms 39:4-5 NLT).
Take a moment and get your life back on track. Make sure your life is what it is supposed to be about. Ask the Holy Spirit to point out areas that need to line up. Ask him to show you if you are really ready to meet God. Acknowledge that you need God and that you want to serve him with your whole heart and your whole mind. Ask him to forgive you and to change you.
If you decide to do what’s needed, prepare for unlimited possibilities. God is amazing and he will do what he has promised.
