Your past … a broken city, a broken body, a broken heart, a broken dream, a broken relationship
Your present … your health, your family, your job, your finances
Your future … your dreams, big or small.
With all that has happened in Paris and other parts of the world in recent days, “impossible” has taken front and center stage with a megaphone. You have the choice as to how you listen. Yes, it is your choice. How do I know that? One word answer: Abraham.
Abraham didn’t focus on his own impotence and say,
“It’s hopeless. This hundred-year-old body could never father a child.”
Nor did he survey Sarah’s decades of infertility and give up.
He didn’t tiptoe around God’s promise
asking cautiously skeptical questions.
He plunged into the promise and came up strong,
ready for God, sure that God would make good on what he had said.
That’s why it is said, “Abraham was declared fit before God
by trusting God to set him right.”
Romans 4:19-22 – The Message
I just love this passage, don’t you? Because it shows us from the beginning the relationship our Heavenly Father wants with us is for us to be honest with ourselves and honest with Him. To quote Derek Prince “Real faith faces facts. Any attitude that is not willing to look at the facts is not real faith.” We have an open invitation to look at whatever facts we are facing, regardless of the impossibility factor, and to make the choice: “God I believe You are who You say You are and You are more than able to do what You say You will do.” That is how you and I can be ready for God to show up and provide in ways we cannot even begin to imagine.
Along with all of you, I’ve done a lot of thinking, grieving and praying this week as the story of Paris has unfolded. I have been inspired by the courageous testimonies of so many Parisians to choose hope and life over fear. Their stories stirred memories of my experience from a couple of years ago Can Beauty and Pain Co-Exist .
As I read I was reminded that every day, sometimes more than once a day depending on what facts we are facing, we have to make the choice can wisdom or fear keep me safer?
What’s the condition of your choice muscles? Maybe you don’t want or like hearing this … but it is up to you whether or not you hope. You have to make that choice. And, like exercising any other muscle, it is pushing against pressure and opposite forces that helps muscles to grow. But, the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets and the better it works.
Here’s your “choice muscle exercise mantra” 🙂
Let us hold strong
to the confession of our hope,
never wavering,
since the One who promised it to us is faithful.
Hebrews 10:23
May I share with you why my choice is wisdom?
“Because of God
you are ·in [united with; in relationship with] Christ Jesus,
who has become for us wisdom from God
1 Corinthians 1:30
When you make the choice to choose wisdom, you are choosing Jesus, Himself … and what a choice He is! 🙂
We look at this Son and see the God who cannot be seen.
We look at this Son and see
God’s original purpose in everything created.
For everything, absolutely everything,
above and below, visible and invisible,
rank after rank after rank of angels—everything
got started in him and finds its purpose in him.
He was there before any of it came into existence
and holds it all together right up to this moment.
Colossians 1:15-17
Why does our Heavenly Father want us to make this choice?
The Father has delivered and drawn us to Himself
out of the control and the dominion of darkness
and has transferred us into the kingdom of the Son of His love.
Colossians 1:13
I know that’s where I want to hang out. How about you? And BONUS, when we make that choice here is who we get to be:
Arise, shine, for your light has broken through!
The Eternal One’s brilliance has dawned upon you.
See truly; look carefully—darkness blankets the earth;
people all over are cloaked in darkness.
But God will rise and shine on you;
the Eternal’s bright glory will shine on you, a light for all to see.
Isaiah 60:1-2
Every heart in the world is crying out is there something more, something better? We get to answer back “Yes, there is”.
Hope Without Limits 