Tuesday, July 19, 2016

When your worst enemy is yourself





Sometimes we pray to God asking him to deliver us from something that is in the world, like a disease for example. Other times we need to ask God to save us from ourselves. Sometimes we aren't miserable because of what has happened to us, we are miserable because we are stuck inside of ourselves. There is no more miserable place to be than to be stuck inside yourself, inside your own selfishness and negative attitude.


Pastor Steven Furtick from Elevation Church talks about how gratitude is what we need to find a way out of the misery. Once we get to the place where we stop complaining about what God has given us and start doing what God has called us to do we will no longer be miserable. God can use everything that comes our way to work together for good, even the messes that we have gotten ourselves into. God has a purpose and provision for each one of us but if we allow ourselves to get stuck in the now, complaining about our current situation and becoming angry and bitter, we might never make it to where God wants to lead us. A purpose-filled life isn't going to be easy nor comfortable, but if we keep an attitude of gratitude and keep moving forward nothing can stop us from fulfilling our destiny.


The people from history who we still celebrate and remember today are not the people who felt they had a right to sit around and complain and point their finger at all the problems in the world. These are the people who stopped complaining and got up and decided to do something about the problems. They didn't let anything stop them. They kept moving forward because a safe and comfortable life was never their goal. These people were more interested in making an impact than they were in living comfortably in the here and now.


God has big plans for our lives, but each one of us get to choose if we will stay put "sitting under the plant" like Jonah, or if we will get up and go do something that matters. This sermon really hit home for me personally. I definitely feel like the ungrateful hitchhiker in Steven's example sometimes. I come to God with all these demands of what I want my future to look like, rather than to just trust God's plan for me and keep a grateful attitude. I'm so glad life usually doesn't end at 30, but that we get to live for about 100 years, because I still have sooo many things to learn about life.



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