BELIEVE God's got you. . .UNDERSTAND it is just a test . . .NEXT LEVEL preparation . . . TIME for action!!
BELIEVE– First you must BELIEVE that God is with you. The beautiful thing about this first step is that if you believe that God is with you and you know that God is omnipotent, then you know he is all knowing and all seeing. You know that because he is God, nothing catches him unaware. This would mean that this curve ball in your life, did not catch him by surprise. He’s not shaking in his boots. And if he is your partner in life, then you don’t need to shake in your boots. Remember, as your strong, capable covenant partner, when you are weak and he is strong, it is his responsibility to strengthen you in your time of weakness. Now, how reassuring is that? Yes, during tough times in life. When chaos surrounds you and things are unsure, remind yourself of what you Believe and in whom you Believe. UNDERSTAND – Second, we must UNDERSTAND that the challenges in life will come, but because you are a child of God, they will not break you. Begin to understand that challenges are just an opportunity for you to strengthen your faith muscle. If you never had challenges, then you would never need to exercise your faith. And, we do understand that anything that is not exercised or used in our life wanes. A muscle that is not used will atrophy. When you see an individual who is physically fit and whose muscles are “cut” or well defined, it is because they exercise them. They probably spend many hours working out. The act of putting stress on the muscle is what causes it to develop. The same is true for our faith. Troubles or problems are opportunities for us to work our faith. They challenge our belief level and cause us to dig deeper within ourselves to really define what we believe. Will we stand or will we allow this to knock us out the game? They are merely a test. This Is Only A Test When I was a teenager the television broadcasting systems would occasionally need to test their emergency broadcasting signal. When this would happen, the program we were watching on TV would be interrupted. The announcer would come on and say, “This is a test. This is only a test for the next 60 seconds this station is conducting a test of the emergency broadcasting system.” Then you would hear this long high pitch signal. After the 60 seconds the announcer would come back on to say, “This concludes this test.” When life starts throwing you curve balls; when challenges begin to break out everywhere; when you are facing problem after problem; realize it is only a test! Just begin to sound the emergency broadcasting signal and state to yourself. This is a test; this is only a test. Your systems are being tried to see if your Faith systems are working properly. Sound Your Faith Alarm For the believer, instead of a loud, high pitch signal, we use songs of praise and we speak the promises of God. We hold fast to the promise that God has said he will never leave us nor forsake us. We hold onto the promise that even though this may not feel good at the moment, we know that ultimately it is going to work out for our good. We understand that if God permitted this trouble to come our way then with God on our side, we will ultimately triumph over it. We know this is just a proving ground. There is something that we need to learn in this test that will help us on our journey. The trouble did not come to destroy us, but to prepare us for the next level. NEW THING/NEXT LEVEL- Thirdly we must get ready for the NEW THING. God said that he would do a new thing in us. As you have asked God for the new thing, the greater thing, the next level, he must get you ready for that new thing. By virtue of it being new or next level, means that we have not been there before. This would mean that we may not know how to handle it, because we have no previous experience in it. This fact seems to elude us when we are asking for more and greater. We miss the fact that more and greater comes with more responsibility, more stress, or more weight of sustaining the greater. God Our Heavenly Father Because God is a good Father, he needs to test us out to see if we can handle the more and the greater. As a loving parent, you wouldn’t just give the car keys to your child (even though they ask for them) unless you are certain that they can drive a car. There is a preparation time, a training time, a proving time. By the time you hand your child the keys to the car, you are sure they can handle it. It’s the same with our Heavenly Father. He wants us to grow to experience greater and next level. But he must prepare us to be able to handle the next level. So, we must go through the preparation. The trials, problems, situation, turbulence, chaos, and challenges are just the proving ground, preparing us for the next level. Arming us with the skills, the knowledge, and the wisdom to know how to succeed on the next level. This knowledge can help us to go through the challenges with grace. And because we know he is right there with us, we can not only go through them, but we are able to also GROW through them. TIMING/TAKE ACTION– And lastly, the fourth, is TIMING AND TAKING UNUSUAL ACTION. Timing is so important. The Word says, "To everything there is a season.” But there is something about those seasons of trials, that makes them seem to last forever. The problems and challenges of life can almost seem to make time stand still. You begin to wonder, will I come out of this? When will this be over? The struggle of it all can even begin to make you question your ability to overcome the challenge. Your self-confidence begins to waiver. The weight of it all feels as it will crush you at any moment. And you may begin to question, “will this ever pass?” Why BUNT? The topic of this post came to me this morning as I was contemplating the numerous curve balls that life had been throwing at me this year. I thought to myself, “What do you do when life throws you a curve ball?” I heard: “You bunt” That’s funny, because I am not a real big baseball fan. I did, however, understand the term bunt. I started thinking about, why bunt? I decided to research why do batters decide to bunt the ball? I found out that in most cases bunts are done to throw off the opponents. It’s an element of surprise. Because the opposing team is expecting the batter to act a certain way, when he (or she) switches up and bunts, it completely throws off the defense and they must react to what they were just given. When Trouble Comes Don’t Act Normal This made me think, this might be why God tells us to praise in a time of trouble. Because when the opposing team is throwing trouble your way, the normal reaction would be to cry, become frustrated, talk about the problem all the time, etc. But when you bunt, you throw them off. When you praise, sing, and begin to thank God for the answer, you totally knock the opposing team off their game. They will need to react to your bunt. This puts you more in control of the outcome. Your posture has moved from one of defensive to one of offensive. By taking this action you are putting the control of the outcome back into your hands. Yes, I like that! So, the next time life throws you a curve ball. Don’t sit around crying about the unfairness of the curve balls. . . . BUNT! Then run like your life depends on it!!
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