Fuel

I love the spirit of victory that emanates from Romans 8:28-37…

It implies that we don’t have to settle for merely becoming survivors in the trek of life. With God’s power and goodness at work in our lives, we truly can become “more than conquerors” in every aspect of our lives. Here are some principles that can help us, like Paul, develop a “more than conqueror” attitude through Jesus Christ.

1. In ALL situations, meditate on the goodness of God.

Romans 8:28 affirms us that ALL things work together for good, for those who love God and are called according to his purpose. In Psalm 27:13, David zeroed in on the goodness of God while finding himself in a seemingly hopeless situation. “I believe that I should look upon the goodness of God in the land of the living.” He wrote these words while being confined to a cave as a bounty was on his head. But he believed, despite his circumstances, that he would see God’s goodness, not just in a future heaven, but in the land of the living… In the not-so-distant future. God will turn things around in the hear and now!

2. Know that, with God, everything can have a redemptive purpose.

Have you ever had an “apparent” failure that turned into a redemptive experience? The truth is, no failure needs to remain unredeemed when God’s word promises otherwise. We need not shy away from taking necessary risks when ultimately we know that we cannot fail if we are following God wholeheartedly. Even if we “seem” to fail in the eyes of ourselves and others, God evaluates failure completely different from people. Knowing that everything has a redemptive purpose gives us great confidence to step out in faith and do things others are afraid to do because we know that ultimately God will grow us through setbacks and any “apparent” failure. Redemption is a powerful life-giving force that many will never experience because they are too afraid of failure. For the person fully following Christ, failure is never fatal; it always brings life-giving redemptive purpose that ultimately galvanizes even greater confidence in his or her estimation of God’s goodness.

3. Never exchange your TRUE identity for a victim mentality.

In verse 35, Paul reflected on all of his hardships and took note that others regarding him as being a sheep headed to the slaughterhouse… the Titanic just waiting to sink. But Paul refused to look at himself the way others looked at him. He said, “No,” in other words, “I don’t think so homey!” In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. And he goes on to declare that nothing can separate us from the power of God’s love at work in our lives. In times of hardship, it’s critical that we don’t develop a victim mentality. We need a “more than conqueror” mentality. Even when others have written you off, you must never exchange your TRUE identity for what your circumstances or people have declared over you. Know who you are and declare your identity over and over again. You are not a victim – you are a child of God with incredible redemptive purpose and limitless potential.

4. Be willing to learn endurance.

Hebrews 10:35-36 says, “Therefore do not throw away your CONFIDENCE, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised.” Confidence is something God wants all of his children to possess just like we would want our own children to be confident. But it’s hard to have confidence in times of distress. Yet we grow the most in times of adversity as opposed to prosperity. The generation that came out of the Great Depression also came to be known as “The Greatest Generation.” There is a correlation! Maintaining your confidence while waiting for God’s breakthrough in your life is where you will grow the most. If we begin to understand that our “waiting” is integral to our growing in Christ-likeness, imagine what our lives could look like if we learned to accept waiting with appreciation. Imagine the endurance it will produce in us…

5. Lastly, maintain your integrity while waiting on God’s goodness.

The word “integrity” stems from the Latin adjective integer, meaning “whole” or “complete”. In this context, integrity is the inner sense of “wholeness.” Erich Fromm said, “Integrity simple means not violating one’s own identity.” After Job lost everything in his life including the lives of his children, his wife questioned why he maintained his integrity and chided him to curse God and just get it over with. But Job maintained his integrity and it contributed to his great confidence in being able to declare, “though he slay me, yet will I TRUST him!” Job didn’t forfeit his TRUE identity. He held fast to his God. He retained his integrity. And his fortunes were restored. There is confidence and HOPE that is fortified in you when you maintain your integrity.

Hold to these five principles and watch God produce in you an unshakable inner confidence of who you REALLY are: MORE THAN A CONQUEROR!!!

Are you struggling to find margin in your life?

Let me rephrase that: Are you struggling to find passion, creativity, and spiritual clarity in your life?

In his book Anam Cara, John O’Donohue tells a story about a European explorer in Africa who hired some native Africans to help carry his equipment through the jungle. They didn’t stop for three days. At the end of the third day, the hired hands stopped and refused to move on. The explorer asked why, and one of the African natives said, “We have moved too quickly to reach here, now we need to wait to give our spirits a chance to catch up with us.”

When you don’t have margin in your life, everything else suffers. It is hurried complexity that takes the life out of life. And yet it is the simplicity of abiding in Christ that puts the life back into life (John 15:1-11).

“Recovery of the Sabbath is the most crucial and most demanding covenant command (spiritual discipline) now to be faced in the technological society.” -Walter Brueggemann

God fills the empty spaces. Having margin in our lives brings renewed passion, creativity, clarity, and purpose.

That’s why God commanded us to take a Sabbath. The word Sabbath means “to rest from labor” and “to catch one’s breath.”

Are you struggling to find passion, creativity, clarity, and orientation of purpose? It may be time to slow down and carve out some margin in your life. It’s time to let your spirit “catch up” to you. That may mean taking a break from social media, internet, and technology.

In addition to practicing a weekly Sabbath day, we need to discover how to continually rest in Sabbath-moments by taking spiritual breaks a few minutes each day. By keeping the discipline of a Sabbath we can have our passions renewed and reoriented with Christ, a deep inner tranquility sustained by union with God and intimacy in prayer.

We need pauses… we need margin… we need renewed spirits. We don’t get that renewed passion by violating the covenant command to find rest. Find it, or burnout. There’s not another option.

In Rocky IV, Ivan Drago is the formidable Russian foe. But late in his bout with underdog Rocky Balboa, Drago begins to realize that Rocky has something the human iron curtain himself doesn’t have: Too much heart!

As the fight prolongs and Drago becomes increasingly convinced that you just can’t stop Rocky from coming, he turns to his trainer in a disheartening realization and says, “He’s not human. He’s like a piece of iron.”

Drago’s description of Rocky is more like that of a machine, not a human being.

That’s the picture I see of the Apostle Paul in the New Testament. Though human, he didn’t appear human. He came across more like a subhuman machine… a machine that couldn’t be deterred in his faithfulness to the work of Jesus Christ.

This “piece of iron” says things like “Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” (1 Corinthians 15:58)

In Ephesians 6 he says, “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm.”

Paul knew what he was up against. He was constantly under attacks from the enemy. But he never swayed from his purpose and mission. He always had a way of turning the missiles of his adversaries into motivation to take the Gospel even further.

I love this in Philippians 1:12, Paul writes these words from a prison cell, “I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel.”

You know you have an iron will when you come to the place in life where you can face any kind of suffering and adversity with the determination that it will only serve to advance the Gospel of Jesus Christ – even a prison cell!

How can you defeat a man of this kind of spirit? Rocky Balboa is inspiring, but I’ll follow the Paul-type into battle any day of the week. Sorry, Stallone, I love ya and all, but Paul was the real “piece of iron.”

How about you my friend… what are you facing right NOW? Can you face it with the iron determination that you will stand in the face of adversity and declare that it will only serve to advance the life-giving story of Jesus Christ through you and your life.

Determine today to stand in the face of adversity and let your “iron” will prevail. Be immovable in the Lord!!!

“No more Mister Nice Guy…” I think Alice Cooper had the right idea!

It is so easy to get caught up in making “pleasing people” our mission in life. Especially those of us who care about others so much. One of the defining marks of authentic Christianity is that followers of Jesus walk in love. But chew on this for a moment: Jesus loved people more than any other human entity in the history of the world, and yet the person, message, and mission of Jesus has “ticked off” more people in history than any other historical figure.

One of the reasons we get tripped up into “people-pleasing” is that we don’t want to be labeled as someone who doesn’t care. But as we learn from Jesus, we see that “people-pleasing” doesn’t mean we are more “loving” people… and contrariwise, it sometimes even means we are NOT loving at all – we are merely enabling people in their dysfunction.

Being labeled as the nice guy doesn’t translate to LOVE in the heavenlies. Sometimes it’s even translated into a much deeper reality of not caring at all (apathy and negligence) – though we try and dress it up as something altogether more spiritual sounding like “compassionate” or “empathetic.”

When in reality, it’s nothing short of social flattery that just wants to be deemed as getting along with everybody.

Healthy, functional parents understand this. If your sole agenda as a parent is to be the nice guy, I will one day be visiting your child in a juvenile detention center via Breakaway Outreach (product placement, lol). Parenting means I have a responsibility to rear my children into responsible adults which necessitates tough love at times which is not always popular with those we love most (our children). Love requires the discipline of doing what is RIGHT even when it makes others feel uncomfortable in the moment.

Jesus always had his Father’s approval at the forefront of his ambition and because of that focus, the man who loved more than anyone in history also offended more than anyone else. He didn’t massage people’s insecurities by placating them with nice words when the truth would set them free. He had their soul in mind, not their feelings.

Every family member, Pharisee (religious leaders), and political zealots in Jesus’ time had their own personal agenda for him. Even his own disciples had an agenda for Him. If Jesus’ goal was to be the “nice” guy, he would’ve appeased them all, consequently reducing his mission and his value to niente (nothing). But because he stuck to his mission, he carried out his love in a redemptive way that valued people more than just pleasing them.

Get this, our incessant need to please people devalues us and it devalues those we are trying to please. It shrinks our personal mission in life and robs others of God’s redemptive purposes in their lives. If Jesus tried to please everyone in his path he would’ve never made it to the cross. Redemption would not be available to us today if Jesus was merely trying to please people. Instead, he zeroed in on his MISSION and brought more value to humanity than he ever would’ve had he wanted to be remembered as the “nice” guy.

If you want to help shape eternity and bring value to people in the world, for heaven’s sake, stop trying to please everybody! Don’t devalue people or yourself by people-pleasing. Play to the audience of ONE. Aim to please your heavenly Father and you will bring more good to this earth than merely being seen as the “nice” guy.

Like Jesus, if you try to please everyone along your path, you will never reach your God-purposed destiny.

1 Thessalonians 2:4 - “On the contrary, we speak as men approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel. We are not trying to please men but God, who tests our hearts.”

Galatians 1:10 - “Am I now trying to win the approval of men, or of God? Or am I trying to please men? If I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ.”

“Every Christian is either a missionary or an imposter.” – Charles Spurgeon

I love that quote! You can’t separate yourself from His “mission” and call yourself His “follower.” The two are immutably wedded. To be about the mission of Jesus Christ IS to be his follower.

On our recent trip to Florida we had some friends of ours take our family out on a VIP private tour to swim with the Manatees in Crystal River. We boated out to the site and were instantly surrounded by these huge creatures swimming all around the boat. Our guide jumped right in and started snorkeling with them. I followed and expected Steph, my 8-yr old, to jump right in behind me… it didn’t happen. She stood paralyzed in fear on the deck.

Steph is typically the daredevil in our family. She gets that from her Momma. So I was somewhat taken aback to see her afraid of this experience. In this moment she was stuck. I hadn’t seen her this fearful in a long time. Ironically, it was the youngest, Mackenzie, who was the first to get in the water with me followed by Zack, our 6-yr old.

I gently urged Steph to get in but she wouldn’t, and I didn’t want to pressure her so I took the other two over to pet the Manatees. A few minutes later Steph was in tears. I knew her dilemma. She didn’t want to miss this experience but she was terrified to get in the water. To add to her regret, our guide had an underwater camera shooting video and pictures of this epic adventure. Steph has seen Shark Week on Discovery and was determined to play it safe here! The water was too intimidating in itself, let alone these huge marine mammals also known as “Sea Cows.”

In that defining moment, I made my daughter this solemn promise: “Honey, I can’t promise you that in life it will always be SAFE to jump into the ‘waters,’ but I can promise you this, If you don’t jump, you will be watching this video later and you will regret not being in the picture.”

I am convinced that at the end of our years it will be regrets of inaction that far outweigh the regrets of action in our lives. In other words, we will be more regretful over not being in the picture at all (playing it safe) because we were afraid to jump, rather than being in the picture and looking silly, vulnerable, and even feeling like a failure at times.

That’s all it took for my little 8-yr old princess to conquer her gripping fear and jump into the deep. She got a hold of the reality that if she played it “safe,” she would regret it forever. All of a sudden danger became an adventure to live rather than a fear to avoid.

Thucydides once said, “The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it.”

As Lee Ann Womack artistically reminds us, “And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance, I hope you dance.”

I’m so glad that when my little girl was faced with the choice to sit it out or dance, she chose to dance. She lived fearless as she met her perceived danger with reckless abandon and ultimately swam with the giants that day.

I’m so glad that Moses, when faced with the fear of playing it safe, instead chose to dance by confronting Pharaoh to free his people from slavery. I’m so glad that David, instead of playing it safe with the sheep, decided to dance with destiny by challenging Goliath and the Philistines. Peter didn’t cower in the boat; he danced with Jesus on the water. And what about Esther? She had everything to lose by approaching the king uninvited, but she didn’t play it safe when destiny was on the line. She danced.

That’s my prayer for all my children as they grow. When they are faced with the choice of playing it safe or dancing with destiny by recklessly abandoning to God’s call on their lives, I pray they dance.

I am so glad that all my children are in the video below. They didn’t stay in the boat – they chose to DANCE. Will you do the same when faced with the fears in your life?