Today I will be continuing from what I wrote to you about on Wednesday. This is from the notes I took Tuesday night during our training with Pastor Chip Judd. The topic was Destiny Derailers-What keeps us from reaching our full potential. On Wednesday I shared the first thing that keeps us from reaching our full potential is never fully getting our lives on track. Today I will share the second reason we fail to fulfill the potential God has placed inside of us.
The second reason we fail to realize our potential is because we miss opportunities or we refuse to grow through them. Opportunity is God's gift to you. What you do with the opportunity is your gift to God. There are two types of regrets in our lives. There is the regret of action (something we have said or done) and the regret of inaction (not doing or saying something we should have said or done). I have more than my fair share of regrets of action. I could write for days. However, if I stop and think about my regrets of inaction, I could write for months! How many times have we walked away from a conversation and thought "oh, why didn't I say THAT?" It is not so much what we said that we contemplate, it's what we did not say. There are many times God will prompt us to do something and yet we continue on our way without heeding His voice. A sign of our spiritual maturity is seeing or seizing God-ordained opportunities.
In our lives we go through cycles. There is the journey uphill and often when we reach the peak of an experience we will encounter challenges we had not previously foreseen. It is through these challenges that we grow. However, for many people, these challenges cause us to stumble or derail in life. When things are going well and life is happy, we can sometimes be blindsided by the areas in our lives where we need to grow. If we become too prideful, then God will start to deal with us in this area. If we have anger management issues, He will place us into situations requiring us to maintain our composure. Just when you start to see fruit in your life, there will be a time of pruning! Pastor Judd refers to this as the John 15 principle.
"I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit He takes away and every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples."
These pruning moments become mirrors of our life. It is during our pruning that God requires us to examine ourselves. God loves us enough to show us the things we need to know about ourselves. This also tests our faith walk with Him. Will we continue to abide in Him throughout this process, or will we derail and turn away from the call and plan He has for our lives? Satan would love nothing more for us to fall off track and live a life beneath all God has for us. The difference in maintaining our course or falling away is the size of our "want" What I want on the inside HAS to be big enough for me to work through all the "stuff". I mentioned Wednesday how I want to have a healthy relationship. I know this desire has required (and still requires) me to deal with all the stuff from my past. It has been a tremendously painful process. However, through this pain I have already experienced growth and healing in many areas of my life. I know I still have much more to work on, but at least I'm not where I was two years ago when this journey truly began!
My prayer for each of you today is that you would not get tired during the pruning. I pray as God reveals the mirrors of your life that you will begin to not only see yourself as you truly are, but He would give you a glimpse of the you He has created you to be. If you do not see a great plan for your life, I pray He begins to reveal it to you. I pray you begin to understand we were not created to simply be mediocre or ordinary. He created each one of us with specific gifts, talents, goals, and desires. You can win this battle, but not if you drop out!
No comments:
Post a Comment