“How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them, they would outnumber the grains of sand— when I awake, I am still with you.” Psalms 139:17-18 NIV
Do you believe that God is for you?
That He wants the best for you?
That He is rooting for you?
That He has better things for your life than you could think up yourself?
Do you find yourself wondering why life feels anticlimactic sometimes.... Why your mood fluctuates with your circumstances.... Why the difficult times pull you right down and the highs never seem to last long enough.... Do you find yourself wondering if there is something more..... Are there people who actually care how I am when they ask..... Is there somewhere that I can truly feel at home..... Is there a path of life that I feel confidenct and fully myself.....
Do the bigger details of life seem a bit daunting sometimes and it's often rght in the middle of your tax return or cleaning the kitchen sink, where it feels completely bizarre that there is a great God who cares about you... an idea of supernatural in the middle of driving to work or buying milk.....
But you've got to believe that right in the middle of it all, there is a God.
There is a God who sees and a God who cares. A God who knows the middle of your life intrinsically and perfectly and wants nothing more than to show you the 'more' of life!
There is a God who sees your tiredness and wants to give you energy.
There is a God who feels your loneliness and what's to be your friend.
There is a God who watches your choices and wants to hand you the best option.
There is a God who sees it all and who loves you through it all.
A God who despite your messing up, still sent His Son who has ALREADY paid the price for you to be redeemed into the kingdom. A Kingdom that is alive and flourishing right now. That you have access to live in right now. A kingdom of joy and laughter, of direction and purpose, of love and good company.
But you have to take hold of it.
You can live your life in the normal everyday paying taxes and cleaning the house, going to work and buying groceries, or you can spend your day in abundance of the eternal that will never fade... the eternal of God's beautiful life for you. This doesn't always change the things you do each day but it transforms how your perspective towards the day.
This God, He thinks about you. A lot. He loves you so much that His thoughts about you and the plans He has for you, if you will let Him in, will outnumber the grains of sand on the seashore!
That's an inexplicable amount of thoughts!
And it's not just a laidback, nice to hear verse like the well-known Jeremiah 29 which tells us that, although it's a good place to start!
“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”
Jeremiah 29:11 NIV
If we're honest, we've heard that one enough to switch off each time it's said... but what if we read it with the lens of it being completely and utterly true....? How might that affect your perspective on today? That you can have hope even if you feel as if you've been exiled from your dreams (because this verse was spoken to God's people who had been exiled from their land by God!)
“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”
1 Peter 2:9 NIV
You're God's special possession! How might that change the way you speak about yourself next time you look in the mirror or feel a tendency to compare yourself to someone else....?
The world might tell you to look better, run faster, work harder, be smarter, go further. There's always a competition. Something you should be better at... But God's Word tells us that life is a race, not a competition!
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
Hebrews 12:1-2 NIV
Run the race set before you, not the person next to you. Fixing your eyes on Jesus who is the one who knows your race and therefore the only one who can guide your race.
“What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Romans 8:31, 37-39 NIV
Nothing can separate you from that which Christ has for you. So why does it sometimes feel like our very lives do?
“Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.”
Romans 8:5-6, 15-17 NIV
We've got to live according to the spirit. We've got to remove our mind from absorbing the current and onto the eternal, and we can only do this by inviting God into the current! Inviting Him into your daily decisions, your choices, your likes and dislikes, the people you're around.... you've got to invite Him in and believe that he is speaking, he is moving, he has plans and he has beautiful thoughts about you?
Because His thoughts for you ARE like the grains of sand on the beach. Thousands upon thousands. But you have to hold them closely and carefully otherwise they will slip through your hands.
You could go outside right now, go to the beach right now and hold a handful of sand in your hands. And just see how easily it slips away if you're not treating it carefully....
Take hold and believe that God has you on His mind!
~ X ~
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