As more of our world is being shut down and people are measuring 6-feet of social distance or avoiding people altogether, I invite you to take a few minutes to reflect on your own life. What you feed grows, and what you starve dies. Are you feeding your fear or your faith? Go ahead and take a few minutes and record your recent thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and how you’ve acted them out…What are you feeding and growing?
While most people and places are shutting down, I’ve recognized just how much people, systems, and the world are influenced by fear. It’s easy to recognize because I spent way too many years of my life being restricted by my own fears and anxiety. I shied away from growth-producing opportunities because I was afraid of rejection, failure, or bad things happening. Even knowing that 90% of what we worry about doesn’t ever happen never kept me from developing my fear-based existence.
When I took the plunge into the sea of God’s love, everything began to change for me. When I exchanged my fear-based foundation for my faith-based foundation, I began to fuel off of God’s love. What began to grow was my love for God, myself, people, and life. Instead of hiding in fear, I started discovering God’s love and grace wherever I looked.
I started to understand that God’s Word is a love letter written by forty Spirit-inspired authors. Its transcendent story is about the eternal God who designed people to worship God and serve one another. It’s a story of a loving God relentlessly pursuing people who rebel and do the opposite of what God designed us to do. We worship ourselves, one another, comfort zones, accumulating wealth, and worldly experiences. We try to get more of what the world offers, and when it doesn’t work and when everything we’ve consumed makes us sick, we go into hiding. Sounds an awful lot like Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden.
Instead of criticizing, shaming, blaming, and rejecting us, God redeemed us through the precious blood of His Son, Jesus Christ. And the Hound of Heaven is on the loose again, working through our next modern-day crisis, to draw our lives back to Him. As we recognize that everything that we depend upon can quickly go away, we are faced with an eternal reality. God is sovereign and unchanging. He’s the only reliable source of life in this world. He doesn’t stop pursuing us, when everyone else keeps their distance. He’s messing with all of our comfort-zone enhancers until we sacrifice them and surrender our lives to Him.
God is like a vast ocean of love, waiting for each one of us to take the plunge. Now the strategic family therapist in me might say, “Maybe you need to try to hang onto what you have and experience more anxiety before you take the plunge.” But if your faith and fear are battling from moment to moment, our Spirit-Driven team just produced a new cutting-edge communication tool to help you and your loved ones find peace during these turbulent times. It’s called “Peas Talks”—finding peace during life’s storms. When “Peas Talks” was completed in February, God knew what was about to hit our fan in March. His timing is perfect. His peace is available when we need it most…NOW!
If you would like to order your own “Peas Talks” deck(s) to facilitate conversations with people you know and care about in your family, workplace, church, or small group, just contact me at glenn@spiritdriven.org. All of our cutting-edge communication tools are $15.00 each.
