“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Ephesians 2:10 NIV).
What keeps you from developing your full potential? Fear. What keeps you from becoming all God wants you to be? Fear. What keeps you from building a legacy that will last into eternity? Fear. There are three kinds of fear that will keep you from developing your talents and accomplishing your purpose. Self-doubt. It keeps people locked in a prison and unable to develop their potential. This is actually the fear of failure. But failure doesn’t have to be fatal! In fact, the fear of failure is far worse than failure itself. Failure actually can be a good thing. Failure is how you learn what doesn’t work. And it’s how you grow. Don’t let self-doubt keep you down. It's better to attempt to do something great and fail than attempt to do nothing and succeed. Self-consciousness. If you worry about what other people think, nothing will ever get done in your life. You just have to do what God tells you to do. That’s all you’re accountable for. You’re not called to be the best in the world. You’re called to be the best that God made you to be. Self-pity. There were two disciples who had spectacular failures. Peter and Judas both denied Jesus in clutch time, but each responded to his failure differently. Judas went out and had a pity party and then hung himself. Peter, on the other hand, wept bitterly, grieved about it, repented, asked God to forgive him, picked himself up, and went back to serving God. And just a few weeks later, Peter spoke to the crowds in Jerusalem on Pentecost, and 3,000 people became believers—and the church was born. Of all the people God could have used to start the church, he used the guy with the biggest failure. That means there’s room for you in the family of God! Instead of living in fear, believe what God says about you in Ephesians 2:10: “For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (NIV).
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“Be very careful how you live. Do not live like those who are not wise. Live wisely. I mean that you should use every chance you have for doing good, because these are evil times. So do not be foolish with your lives. But learn what the Lord wants you to do” (Ephesians 5:15-17 ICB).
If you want to make an impact with your life, you’ve got to do one thing: Get control of your time. Your time is your life. If you don’t learn to manage your time, you’ll limit the legacy of your life. We all have the same amount of time every week: 168 hours. It’s what you do with it that counts! You’ve only been allotted a certain number of days in this world, and if you waste them, you’ve blown it! If you waste time, you’re wasting your life. Your time is your life. You have to stop and ask, “Is this the best use of my time? Is this the best use of my life?” You don’t have time for everything. The good news is that God doesn’t expect you to do everything. So don’t feel guilty about it! There are only a few things worth doing in the first place. Effective people figure out what’s essential in life and what’s trivial, and they spend more time doing the essential things and less time doing the trivial things. You can’t eliminate all the trivia in your life, but you can reduce it. This sounds easy, but frankly it’s often difficult to choose between what’s best for your life and what’s easiest for your life—especially when you’re tired. When you’re tired you don’t want to do the best thing. You want to do what’s easy. That’s why if you’re really going to make something of your life, you have to learn to get some rest. If you’re not rested, you won’t have the mental, emotional, and physical strength to say, “I’m going to do the right thing instead of the easiest thing.” Don’t waste your life. Don’t settle for second best. Don’t go through life just existing. You were not created to just coast. God made you for a mission and a purpose. That starts by asking, “Is what I’m doing the best use of my life?” “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen” (Ephesians 4:29 NIV).
God wants us to use our words to build others up. Ephesians 4:29 says, “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen” (NIV). Sometimes our words are like a sledgehammer. We swing away without thinking, and suddenly we look around and realize a pile of relational rubble surrounds us. When you thoughtlessly sling your words around and tear people down, your relationships are going to suffer. One reason we’re not constructive with our words is we don’t realize how powerful this tool is—our mouth and the words that God has given to us. We say things without thinking. And people remember them. You, too, can still remember certain things people said to you in a careless way—even as far back as grade school or college or when you first started working. That’s how powerful words are. So when it comes to your mouth, think of it as a power tool and be extremely careful with it. You might consider the similarities between the owner's manual of a power tool, and the way we use our mouths. The directions for a power tool say:
How can you use your mouth more carefully so you are using it to build relationships and not to tear people down?
Consider making this part of your morning prayers: “May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer” (Psalm 19:14 NIV). “For the Holy Spirit, God’s gift, does not want you to be afraid of people, but to be wise and strong, and to love them and enjoy being with them” (2 Timothy 1:7 TLB).
If you want to connect with someone, you’ve got to be willing to take the first step. This often requires courage. Why? Because it’s fear that disconnects human beings. When we’re full of fear and anxiety, we don’t get close to others. In fact, we back off. We’re afraid of being rejected, manipulated, vulnerable, hurt, used. All of these fears cause us to stay disconnected in life. This fear is as old as humanity itself. When Adam and Eve sinned and God came looking for Adam, Adam said, “I was afraid, and I hid.” People have been doing that ever since. We’re afraid, so we hide. We hide our true selves. We don’t let people know what we’re really like, because if we do and they don’t like us, we face rejection. And so we pretend. Fear does three terrible things to relationships:
So where do you get the courage to take the first step to connect with someone and go to a deeper level of intimacy? You get it from God’s Spirit in your life. The Bible says, “For the Holy Spirit, God’s gift, does not want you to be afraid of people, but to be wise and strong, and to love them and enjoy being with them” (2 Timothy 1:7 TLB). How do you know when you’re filled with God’s Spirit? You’re more courageous in your relationships. You love people. You enjoy being with them. You’re not afraid of them, because God’s Spirit is in your life. The Bible says that “God is love” and “Love casts out all fear.” The more of God you have in your life, the less fear you’re going to have. “If you want to know what God wants you to do, ask him, and he will gladly tell you . . . But when you ask him, be sure that you really expect him to tell you” (James 1:5-6 TLB).
Since God thought up the whole idea of relationships between men and women, parents and children, and friends, doesn’t it make sense to go him for direction when you have a problem? As today’s verse says, “If you want to know what God wants you to do, ask him, and he will gladly tell you” (James 1:5 TLB). Why do we have to ask before he answers? Because our relationship with God begins with faith. He doesn’t force things on us. He invites us into a relationship with him. So we ask. Now, too many times we forget to ask. Most of us are just rushing through our day doing this, doing that, assuming it’s going to be okay. But we need to just stop once in a while and say, “God, I ask you, what is your direction?” He will gladly tell us. And how does he tell you? An answer will usually come through one of two main ways: through people that are following him and through his Word. Get together with a few people who you know seek after God, and ask them for their opinion. Look in their eyes, and get an honest answer. And, turn to God’s Word. Ask him, “God, what do you have to say about this?” Some people think God is not interested in our relationships. After all, he’s got a universe to keep going. But he is interested. He made you! The Bible says, “But be sure in deciding these matters that you are living as God intended, marrying or not marrying in accordance with God’s direction and help, and accepting whatever situation God has put you into” (1 Corinthians 7:17). We understand the hurts that can exist in some relationships, but the incredible promise of God’s Word is that he can bring beauty into any relationship—not perfection, but he can bring beauty. Both people in the relationship have to agree, and it will take some struggle to get there. But to give up is nowhere in the plan or purpose of God. That’s why you have to go to him for direction and guidance “For as you know him better, he will give you, through his great power, everything you need for living a truly good life: he even shares his own glory and his own goodness with us!” (2 Peter 1:3 TLB).
The vast majority of people pay no attention to eternity. They’re living for the here and now, which is a waste, because everything that’s “here and now” isn’t going to matter in five minutes, much less 50 years—and certainly not for eternity. If we stretched a rope from California to Tokyo, and that represented all of eternity, your life on Earth would be represented by less than one millimeter. So how do you live in light of eternity? You live for God’s glory, because he’s going to share his glory with you in heaven. The Bible says in 2 Peter 1:3, “For as you know him better, he will give you, through his great power, everything you need for living a truly good life: he even shares his own glory and his own goodness with us!” (TLB). You don’t get to choose what’s going to happen to you the rest of your life. But you do get to choose how you respond. You can face the future as a cynic, as a critic, as a pessimist, or as a doubter. You can face the future expecting the worst and experiencing the worst. You can face your future being ungracious to other people, and you can live for the glory of yourself. Or you can face the future with gratitude, generosity, and graciousness and live for the glory of God. Which one do you think will make you happier? Which one do you think will make you more successful? Which one do you think will bring a smile to God and the reward of heaven? Matthew 5:16 says, “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven” (ESV). We were created because God wants a family. He wants to spend eternity with his family. He wants to spend eternity with you and me! Heaven is one of the most important reasons Christians can be joyful—God has given us eternal life, and heaven will be amazing! “Some of these people have missed the most important thing in life—they don’t know God” (1 Timothy 6:21 TLB).
The key to a friendship with God is deciding whose friendship you want most. You don’t have time for everybody to be your friend. You’ve got to decide who you want most to be your best friend. The Bible says in 1 Timothy 6:21, “Some of these people have missed the most important thing in life—they don’t know God” (TLB). They know all the baseball scores. They know the stock market quotes. They know the top 10 songs. They know who’s in and who’s out in every soap opera. But they don’t know God. They missed the most important thing in life! If you’re not a friend of God, it means you care about something else more. James 4:4 says, “You should know that loving the world is the same as hating God. Anyone who wants to be a friend of the world becomes God’s enemy” (NCV). When James writes, “loving the world,” he means loving the value system of the world. God wants you to love people, but that doesn’t mean you have to love the world’s value system. We get so caught up in the distractions of life that we tend to do just the opposite. We love the world’s value system, but then we don’t love people. We love materialism. We love pleasure. We love popularity. We love prestige. We love passion, possessions, and position. But God loves people, and he wants us to love them too. One way we show our love to others is to show an interest in their interests. In other words, what is important to you becomes important to me (always within the context of biblical truth). If you’re going to be a friend of God, then you’ve got to care about what he cares about and stop caring about the things he doesn’t care about. God doesn’t care about your image. He’s not interested in your status. He’s interested in your character—not how you look but who you are. An essential step toward friendship with God means choosing to value what God values. “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 3:8 NLT).
You’re never going to become a friend of God in your spare time. You have to make knowing God your number one priority in life. Paul says it like this: “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 3:8 NLT). Are you doing that? Are you seeking God with all your heart every day? Remember: You are as close to God as you choose to be. You’re going to become a friend of God when you want to become a friend of God. You can’t blame anybody else. You can’t blame your wife, your husband, your parents, or your kids. You are as close to God as you want to be. And if you feel far from God, guess who moved? You didn’t make him the number one priority of your life. Knowing and loving God is our greatest privilege. And being known and being loved by God is our greatest pleasure. Have you noticed that you can tell what’s important to people by what they brag about? If their kids are most important, they brag about their kids. If their job is the most important thing in their life, they brag about their job. If travel and having experiences is most important, that’s what they talk about. If partying or buying new clothes is what you talk about most, guess what you value most? You brag about what you value most. God says in Jeremiah 9:23-24, “The wise should not boast of their wisdom, nor the strong of their strength, nor the rich of their wealth. If any want to boast, they should boast that they know and understand me” (GNT). Why? Because that’s what life is all about. Knowing God is what matters most. The God of the universe loves you and wants to have a relationship with you. Getting close to God will give you peace and perspective. Now that’s good news! |
AuthorTaken from Daily Hope by Rick Warren. Categories
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