Recovery part 5
Let's come at this another way to close this Rant series. We're talking about recovering our lives, right? Getting back to basics? Back to good? Back to where God always wanted us to be from the very beginning? And we've seen that the way to do that is to get away with Him. Learn from Him what it means to take a real rest. Walk with Him and work with Him. Now watch this: "If you cling to your life, you will lose it; but if you give up your life for me, you will find it" (Matthew 10:39 NLT). So often in life we miss out on what's available to us because we are too busy looking for it in all the wrong places. We rob ourselves of the gift we've been given by trying to earn something that can't be earned. A gift--especially the gift of God that is His abundant, everlasting, eternal, Resurrection Life of love--is freely given and must simply be received. Received and released. And here's the key to that: You receive it BY releasing it, and you release it BY receiving it! You fill yourself to overflowing with what God has already filled you with by knowing and believing that He has filled you with it! You let Him love you, and then you love Him back by loving people. That's what life is all about. That's what life is! But, again, we miss out on HIS life a lot of times because we are clinging to our OWN lives. What's that old saying? Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it. My Bible case says, "God allows U-turns." And, in fact, I think He encourages them. God will never leave us nor forsake us. He is with us through thick and thin. He knows the way home because He IS the Way, and He IS our home! That's what I want to keep focusing on. When Jesus says, "Walk with me and work with me," we have to understand that HE is ALWAYS walking with US and working with US. When we think we need to hold on to Him (and I'm not saying that's a bad thing, you should hold on to God... to Jesus... to love...) we need to understand that HE is holding on to us and will never let us go! What we need to do... is let go. Let go of some of that stuff that we've collected in our lives that we don't really need. Some of that stuff that is just bogging us down. Holding us back. Tripping us up. It's easy to walk without stumbling when you know that all things are under your feet. The problem is that we don't always see everything under our feet. We see mountains. And we see valleys. We don't always see the straight and narrow way that leads to life. We cling to our preconceptions (misconceptions) and our own way of doing things. The way that seems right to a man, but the end of which is death. We lean on our own understanding many times, and that gets us into trouble. That gets to a place where we NEED to recover. Luckily, that also gets us to a place where God can step in. His strength is made perfect in our weakness. When we can't... He can, and will. When we give God the opportunity to move in our lives, He does. But when we try to do it ourselves, I believe God will let us (at least to a certain degree). I'm just saying, there's a way that seems right to a man... and there's a more excellent Way (and Truth and Life) that is Jesus. When we lose our lives, we receive HIS life. When we try to do it ourselves we get into trouble. When we let Jesus do it in us, and through us, and as us... that's when we experience life to the fullest. That's when we experience LOVE to the fullest. That's when we are truly alive. And that's when we recover our true lives!