@soul-rehab / soul-rehab.tumblr.com
David didn‘t say, “You get rid of all of my enemies.” He said, “Right here, with death hanging over me and with enemies surrounding me, You are with me. You‘re communing with me, feeding me, and creating intimacy with me in this place of weakness and dependence.”
When I read the Bible, I see that I can‘t avoid weakness as I follow Jesus. I also see that I‘m supposed to have a particular attitude toward weakness. In the New Testament, everyone from Paul to Peter to James talks about this attitude. They don‘t talk about tolerating weakness or enduring weakness with gritted teeth. They used words like joy, rejoice, and delight.
In the Bible you‘ll notice a pattern to the people God chooses. He chooses people who are not obvious choices, from a human perspective, to do the jobs He wants them to do. David wasn‘t the obvious choice to be king. Gideon wasn‘t the obvious choice to fight the Midianites. The disciples weren‘t the obvious choices to be world-changing leaders. There‘s a reason God chooses the way He does.
We must put our hope in God‘s promise to build our house: to fulfill the vision He has put in our hearts to bear lasting fruit, make an impact, and step into the fullness of who He created us to be.
In peace I will lie down and sleep, for you alone, Lord, make me dwell in safety. - Psalms 4:8
These are the roots God is establishing in your life. Intimacy and dependence come only through personal knowledge and encounter. Knowing God‘s name means knowing Him personally and knowing His nature.
Trust has two basic elements: intimacy and dependence. Intimacy and dependence are what Jesus was talking about when He told us to remain in Him just as He remained in the Father.
You have to learn to love the cave. If you love the spotlight more than the secret place, you‘re in trouble, because it means you care more about pleasing people than pleasing God. Learn to love when you don‘t get the credit. Learn to love when you get passed over.
Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might. - Ecclesiastes 9:10
For us to navigate the same range of circumstances and find God, our strength in every situation, we have to know where to look and how to continue to look there in the face of the Enemy‘s distractions. Typically, these distractions are going to try to get us to wish we were in someone else‘s process, resist the lessons God is trying to teach us in our circumstances, rush the process, or skip steps in the process. Falling for any of these will prevent us from thriving and will ultimately put us in dangerous places. Avoiding these will enable us to find our strength—God—and grow regardless of the season or circumstance.
When we stand before Him at the end of our lives, the only thing that will matter is whether our hearts were aligned with His and we have long-term fruit. We want to live in such a way that we will hear Him say, “Well done, good and faithful servant!” That‘s the success that must motivate us to embrace His process of building roots in our lives.
He wants to develop His heart-to-heart connection with you to the point where you become fully united with Him, where you think like He thinks, want what He wants, speak like He speaks, and do what He does. This is what it means to remain in Him. Only when you remain in Him will you produce fruit that lasts.
He‘s not looking for a month, or a year or a decade, of you growing more like Jesus and pursuing the things He calls you to do. He‘s looking for a lifetime impact, a generational impact, and an eternal impact.
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