Fight for the Best!

God's plan for your future is always better than your past. He is always moving you forward.

This is a quote from an old post of mine titled, The Best is Yet to Come. It is so true that with God He is always moving us forward to something better. We should always be looking forward to His best not looking back and romanticizing the past. However there is something that often keeps us from getting God's best. Sometimes we think that God's best will simply appear magically because we believe it will, but that is not how it works. Our faith is instrumental but truly walking in faith is not easy. 

It is hard work because there is an enemy that desperately wants to hold us back by tearing down our faith. He will throw circumstance after circumstance our way in an attempt for us to let go of the vision that God placed before us. He will even try and convince us that God has "closed the door" and that it just wasn't God's plan. I believe that many of us have walked away from God's best for us convinced that it wasn't God's plan because we let our circumstance speak louder than God in our life. 

"Nothing in the world is worth having or worth doing unless it means effort, pain, difficulty."

Theodore Roosevelt, 26th president of the United States

Often Christians seem to think that life with Jesus should be easy. They think that we should never have to struggle for anything because God is sovereign. There is a belief among many Christians that whatever happens it is because God willed it to happen and therefore we ha e to just accept that He has a plan for that situation. Although there may be times where this is true, most of the time it's a lie from the enemy. 

God expects us to take our authority on this earth and fight for His will to be done. 

Why else would Jesus tell us to pray for God's will to be done on earth? (Matthew 6:10) if God's sovereignty means that His will is always done no matter what then what would be the point of us praying for it? Clearly God's will is not always done because God desires that all men come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9) and there are many who die without repentance. That is why He has called us to go out and make disciples (Matthew 28:19). 

Paul tells us to "fight the good fight of faith" (1Timothy 6:12). He then later tells Timothy to join him "as a good soldier of Christ Jesus" (2 Timothy 2:3). We are in a war and it's time for us to realize it. Just because something doesn't go our way doesn't mean we should turn back. When we meet resistance then we need to fight through! It's time for your breakthrough!

Are you experiencing resistance in an area that you were sure God had told you to move forward?

When looking back at your life were there times you gave up when you should have pushed forward?

Not anymore! It's time to fight through!

Blog Highlight: A Heart After God

"His word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot."

Jeremiah 20:9

Terence Wright, my brother, has a passion for the Word of God and to see others get into the Word. Every morning he has his daily devotion time and challenges himself to not only read the Word but to write a page on one scripture from his reading. He had been doing this for quite a while when God challenged him to take it a step further and start posting those devotions on his blog for an entire year. 

Since that year is up he hasn't been posting nearly as often but you can go on his archives and find 365 nuggets of wisdom directly from the Word of God with some discussion on it's application into our daily life. 

In addition to that he posted a poem to our brother:

This is to You

A couple of life lessons he has received through parenting:

Life and Kids: Random Thoughts

Cleaning Up the Crap

And most recently a description of their upcoming outreach to Fiji:

Fiji: You can't get any further away until you start coming back

If you have a few moments take a look through some of his posts and get encouraged and challenged! This is just the beginning to an awesome ministry that God has laid out for him. Partner with him and his wife through prayer as they seek God for the ministry that He has for their entire family.

Don't Lose Sight of Your Calling!

being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ;

Philippians 1:6

Did God give you a word?

Did He start preparing you for your calling?

Did He give you a vision for the future?

Don't lose sight of that vision!

God gave David a Word too. In 1 Samuel 16 we see the process that Samuel went through resulting in David being anointed king. God told Samuel to go to the house of Jesse and anoint one of his sons, but David would have been the last one anyone would have expected to have been chosen. Scholars believe that he was 10-12 years old at the time and was simply in charge of his father's sheep. Imagine being 10 years old and being told that you would be the next king!

At first things seemed to be going very well for David. He immediately began to gain favor with the king through his music (1 Sam. 16:18). More and more he gained access to the king's palace and built favor with the king. Then his moment to shine came. Around the age of 16 Goliath began challenging the armies of Israel and everyone was too scared to fight him. David however, knew who His God was and knew that through the power of God he could defeat the giant. 

Immediately after defeating the giant things seemed to really be set up for his calling to come to pass:

1) He married the king's daughter.

2) He became a respected captain of the king's army.

3) He became best friends with the king's son and rightful heir to the throne.

Everything was working out even better than he could have imagined until it all started to unravel. Saul suddenly began to get jealous of David and repeatedly attempted to kill him. Eventually it came to the point that David had to run and hide with the Philistines and then later in the wilderness with only the rejected men supporting him. 

For five years David was running and hiding for his life from Saul. We can only imagine how tempted David was to turn away from the Word that was spoken over him in those five years. There was even one point where his family was kidnapped, his possessions were burned and the very men that were following him were contemplating stoning him. At that point I am sure that David felt as far away from being king of Israel as possible, but even then he didn't lose sight of the Word that God had given him. 

"...But David strengthened himself in the Lord his God."

1 Samuel 30:6b

He strengthened himself in the Lord! At the beginning David had plenty of people and circumstances helping him see his potential as king. God built up his faith in conflicts with bears and lions and then eventually Goliath. The king himself was very happy and encouraging to David. He had his best friend in Jonathan and of course had the prophet Samuel who gave him the Word in the first place. But there came a time where everyone turned against him and he had to "strengthen himself".  

What is the Word that God gave you?

Pastor Sherwood Vegsund, one of my early mentors who helped me keep sight of my potential and gave me some of my first opportunities in ministry, said:

There comes a time in every man's life where faith requires faithfulness.

Over and over the Bible talks about the power of having faith in God's Word. However it never says that faith will be easy. God will give you the people that you need to build your faith in the beginning but there comes a time when things will get hard and God will expect you to be faithful regardless.

Have you been faithful with the Word God has given you?

It wasn't until age 30 that David fully realized the calling that God gave him 20 years prior. It took 20 years of faithfulness! Faithfulness as his father's shepherd, faithfulness as the court musician, faithfulness when facing Goliath, and faithfulness when running for his life. There was even a point where he was crowned king of Judah and not of Israel and he continued to be faithful, knowing that God's Word would come to pass. 

Be faithful where you are and God will bring you to where you are supposed to be!