When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins. - Colossians 2:13
We want to live forever for the same reason that we want to live tomorrow. Why do we want to live tomorrow? It is because there is someone who loves you, and whom you want to see tomorrow, and be with, and love back. - Henry Drummond
The first battle for every heart is to come awake. And I’m not just talking about awakening into salvation. I’m talking about the awakening again and again, and staying awake to the Good God is up to in my life. To see that the journey is not simply about collecting definitions and theological applications but more about encountering and experiencing God and then living to tell about it.
You cannot experience and encounter God asleep. Oh, He is there watching over and is very much Himself ... I’m just unaware, and that is no way to live in the Larger Story.
Awakening to the More seems to be both a desire we express and one we hopefully pray for … with our wills engaged. Then there is God’s part, the heavier part, in which He answers our desire to be seen, known, wanted ... to be LOVED.
Remember the old adage: When the pupil is ready, the teacher will appear.
Are you ready? Do we dare long for more?
Has your “abundant life” “arrived”?
Do you see it, experience it, enjoy it … fight for it?
If the story is about you, you are asleep and living in way too small a story, and that is not why God made you. You were made for intimacy, connectedness, oneness with God … for Love! And we now live in a love story in the midst of a great battle. Without being awake and engaged in your role, your part goes unplayed. That is playing right into our enemy's hands.
The kingdom of darkness wants just that - to keep you in the dark, asleep, and have you live your life small. They fear what you might become, fear of what you might do if awakened and fully alive. I promise you, the few people I have seen this way - awake and engaged - have impact without even trying. And yet they know all too well they are never immune from the enemy's attacks and subtle sleeping spells … but they are less and less affected the more they know who they are and what their enemy is up to.
So what’s your story? How do you see your life in light of the Larger Story? Are you living in more, fighting for more, offering more, becoming more in the hands and heart of the God who is working out all things for your good?
It’s an amazing mystery, proposition, invitation. It is not one that is meant to be solved, but one that is to be entered into and lived.
Are you awake? Are you ready? Do we dare long for more?
And you who were dead in trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your flesh (your sensuality, your sinful carnal nature), [God] brought to life together with [Christ], having [freely] forgiven us all our transgressions, - Colossians 2:13 (AMP)
The Daily Prayer - Paragraph 3
Heavenly Father, thank you for loving me and choosing me before you made the world[3]. You are my true Father – my Creator, my Redeemer, my Sustainer and the true end of all things, including my life. I love you, I trust you, I worship you. Thank you for proving your love for me by sending your only Son, Jesus, to be my substitute and representative.[4] I open up my life anew to all of his Life and all his work, which you ordained for me.[5] Thank you for including me in Christ,[6] for forgiving me my sins, [7] for granting me his righteousness, [8]for making me complete in him.[9] Thank you for making me alive with Christ[10], raising me with him,[11] seating me with him at your right hand,[12] granting me his author- ity[13] and anointing me with your Holy Spirit.[14] I receive it all with thanks and give it total claim to my life.
An excerpt from The Daily Prayer Memory Verse Cards
