What's Your Impact Story?

The difficulties we face in life can leave us marked with bitterness, frustration and anger, but we can choose to not let that be our story. We will all go through different types of challenges and pain in this life. We have a choice between letting our struggles make our hearts numb, hard and cold or warmer than ever before. We can choose faith, trust and forgiveness in the midst of the challenges that come our way and come out on the other side more compassionate, warm and loving than before. The choice is in our own hands.


In this present world it's impossible to live a pain-free life but we get to choose what will be the end result of our challenges: more love or anger, bitterness and hate. The other side of the coin is that this life is also filled with blessings. We also get to choose what our blessings will do to us. When we receive the favor of God we can either let it make us selfish, arrogant and entitled or humble and loving. Both the challenges and the blessings in life come with a test. Will we choose to let both our good times and hard times in life make us better or more self-centered and prideful?


The key to be able to flourish in this life despite challenges and pain is having a close relationship with God. The key to being able to live a very blessed life without becoming self-obsessed, entitled and arrogant is to know God intimately. If we live our lives without knowing God it is natural for us to become self-centered, entitled and full of pride. Everything we do (or choose not to do) in this life matters. Pastor Holly Wagner from Oasis Church in LA teaches a great message in this video and mentions 3 simple things we can do to make an impact during this life:

1.) Be yourself

2.) Be salt

3.) Be light

When you can't do it anymore

Even the strongest people will have weak moments when all they want to do is give up. Pastor Steven Furtick from Elevation Church preaches a great message in this video about those moments in life when we have lost all hope and are ready to quit. Quit on a relationship. Quit on a ministry. Quit on our purpose. Quit on our kids, maybe even quit on life. How can we go on when we have no hope for the future? Sometimes it’s not after a failure that we want to give up but rather when we have reached success in our lives. Why? Success can often require a lot more strength out of us than the struggle prior to our success. Steven Furtick mentions four different factors that can make us want to give up in life:

Disappointment

Sometimes it’s not when our dreams don’t come true that we want to quit but rather after they come true. We tend to struggle with reconciling the picture we had in our imagination with what reality looks like. We grew up watching Hollywood films about love and now our marriage looks very different in reality than it did in our dream about marriage. We dreamed about having a baby but when the baby came being a parent ended up being a lot harder than we had imagined in our dreams.

Responsibility

We want God to bless us with a great career, with children, with a husband and when we receive all these blessings we want to quit. Why? It’s not easy to live a blessed life because the blessings come with responsibility. The responsibilities we have in our lives can be heavy to carry sometimes. Life was easier before our dreams came true. It’s a great privilege to get to see your dreams come true but oh how difficult it can be to live in the blessings of life sometimes. Now when our dreams have come true we have more work to do than before, more people to love and nurture and less time to sleep in on the weekends. When we want to quit in life it’s usually not because we don’t want to do it anymore but because we think we can’t. We say “I’ve had enough” because on the inside we believe that we aren’t enough. We feel like we have done everything we can and we don’t know what else to do.

Opposition

Certain battles we expect in life but what about when difficulty arises in an area we didn’t expect? One area we often don’t expect opposition in is in our inner being. We expect opposition from other people but what about when your greatest enemy lives inside of you? That voice on the inside that tells you that you aren’t going to make it through this struggle and that you aren’t enough. It’s a lot easier to fight off opposition from others than it is to fight the enemy within.

Position

“The reason you have collapsed is not because of your situation, it’s because of your position.”

Steven Furtick

When we find ourselves in a place in life where we want to give up chances are we aren’t finding ourselves very close to God in that moment. In the midst of our struggles God whispers to us to come back to him. God has the power to turn our situation around but we can’t do this all on our own. We need God to intervene in our lives. We weren’t meant to carry all the heavy burdens of this life on our own. What we need to be able to go on when we want to quit is not a change in our feelings, we need a change in our focus.

You are loved! Happy Valentine's Day!

Amy Groeschel from Life Church tells a story in the video about how every year in Middle School flowers where given out on Valentine's Day. Every year Amy was hoping to get a flower but she never received even one. Sadly Valentine's Day can sometimes feel more like "Rejection Day". We all have days in life when we feel unloved, unworthy, lonely and insignificant, but no matter how we feel, or how people treat us, we are always loved by God. The problem is that although we know that God loves us we sometimes doubt his love for us. The little voices in our heads start telling us things like: "If God really loves you this difficult season would not have happened to you." or "If God really loves you your car wouldn't have broken down today." etc. Our spiritual enemy, the devil, is always working in our minds to break us down.


We sometimes decide to define God's love based on our current circumstances. If everything is going great in life we assume that God is pleased with us and cares about us and when we run into difficulty we assume that God doesn't love us. This world view is based on the belief that we earn God's love, but the Bible is very clear on the fact that we can never earn God's love. God's love is freely given to each one of us, even before we were born God knew each one of us and loved us. Christ died on the cross to set each one of us free, to make forgiveness available to each one of us. We don't earn God's love it is freely given and there is absolutely nothing we could do to loose God's love for us. We can choose to spend our whole lives running away from God but He will never leave us.


You have God's heart, He is crazy in love with you. You are chosen by him. We are all God's most treasured possession, and it's so unbelievable that we struggle to wrap our minds around this concept. God is constantly pursuing you. You are valued, you are treasured, you are loved, beyond anything that you could ever understand, and won't fully understand while on this Earth.


Every day, all day, we are surrounded by God's love but often we don't recognize it. Every good and perfect gift comes from God. It's important for us to know that we are loved by God. When we don't have a grasp of God's love for us it limits our ability to receive the blessings of God; his comfort, peace and joy. We can't either love others well if we don't first grasp God's love for us in a deep way.


How do you feel when you hold a newborn baby in your arms? Most people are overwhelmed by the love they feel for their own newborn baby, this is how God feels for each one of us. We are made in his image, we are God's children. God adores you, He is crazy about you and there is nothing you could ever do that would make Him stop loving you. Your whole life God will patiently wait for you to come to him, for you to one day decide to love him back.

Fix The Flow

God says in scripture that He will meet all our needs, but for many of us that's hard to believe. If He is a great giver with unlimited supply, why do we still feel empty? What is standing between us and the flow of God's favor in our lives?

Blessings

I have so many blessings in my life, all wonderful gifts from God. When I look through the photos on my camera I'm reminded of how many amazing gifts I have received from God just this past year. I got to travel to sunny California with my husband, I got to enjoy reading great books and fun movie nights. I spent many weekends downtown strolling along the lake shore and enjoying dinners at my favorite restaurants. This fall I got so much joy from looking at all the beautifully colored trees on a sunny day.

If we look for them we can find beautiful blessings sprinkled all over our lives. These are all beautiful gifts from God that we are meant to enjoy and be thankful for. Except for enjoying the blessings we have been given we also have the chance to be a blessing to others, as we live out our Christian faith.

We can offer help to someone in need, we can be there to listen and give support when someone in going through a difficult time. When we make the extra effort and take the time to be there for someone we will be a blessing in their life. Who do you know that you could be a blessing to this week? When we love and serve each other the world gets less cold and lonely.