Fear Vs Joy
Fear Vs Joy
Do you ever find yourself unable to enjoy life because you're letting fear rule your life? When I read this quote, "Jesus died to give us this life so enjoy it." It hit me like a ton of bricks. Really think about it guys. Jesus died for us. He suffered for us. Think of all he went through and all his mother and father went through -- watching him suffer and die and all he asks of us is to enjoy this life by living his word and surrendering ourselves to him wholly. That's it. And here we are time and time again letting fear keep us from living a joyful life. The enemy wants to keep us from living a good life and wants us as far away from God as possible but we need to fight back. We need to strengthen our prayer life. We need to understand that we are worthy of asking God of our hearts desires. He wants to hear from us and he is capable of giving us more than our mind can comprehend.
This starts with being confident in our prayer. We need to rid ourselves of the 'head hanging' prayers. We need to rid the thought of feeling unworthy of asking God for help, direction or for what we want. When you are feeling unworthy and your prayers start to lose confidence you need to run, not walk but run to his word. "Ask and it will be given to you. Seek and you will find. Knock and it will be opened." Matthew 7:7 There it is. Those are His words. We do not need to ponder what he is trying to tell us. He is telling us straight up, no reading between the lines -- Ask me. Seek me. Knock and the door will be opened. No where will you find him saying, you are not worthy. You will never hear him say that you need to come to him with shame because you are less than. He has never said, hang your head when you ask me and I will think about it or my schedule is booked but I will check it and get back to you. No y'all. Be strong in your requests. Honor Jesus' sacrifice by finding his confidence within you and ask God of your heart's desires. He may not answer in the way you think you need but thankfully God's timing and plan is perfect and he will only give you the best. That is the first step -- to rid your feelings of unworthiness and find the confidence to boldly pray to God. But let us take it one step further. The second step to this, is to be about it. You need to be prepared to put in the work. God is willing and able to answer any of your prayers but we cannot pray and let it end there. We need to be active in God's word. "Man shall not live on bread alone but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God." Matthew 4:4 The third step is to have an open heart with your prayers. We should have an open heart to go where he goes. We need to surrender to the fact that God has mapped out our entire life. He only knows what is for us and what is not for us. We have the enemy fighting against us and God, trying to trick us into wanting what is not for us but when we add those three steps together -- praying in confidence, living out God's word and having an open heart to go where God leads us, we start to subtract the fear we are living in and begin to enjoy life.
My question to you is -- How will you live out God's request when you finally shed the fear and begin to enjoy this life He died to give us?
