This morning I woke up and had a bit of time to just talk with God and think about stuff. That’s my favourite way to wake up. My thoughts drifted to the tough times on the race, times when I’ve been discouraged or felt like God didn’t come through. Times when I began to lose hope or joy and feel discontent. I was thinking about how God brought me through those times and the principles that I’ve really had to nail down on the race to avoid walking in those funks for longer.
The biggest lesson that I learned was from Bill Johnson. He taught in a sermon and he also wrote a book called “Encourage yourself in the Lord”. This is the Lesson
1. Always focus on what God is doing, don’t focus on what He’s not doing. This will honestly keep you encouraged and joyful and amazed for the rest of your life if you can just get this down. For me the best way is just to document all the blessings that God is giving me. In James it says that every good and perfect gift is from above. That means absolutely everything good in your life comes from God. If I just start writing down all the blessings and things I’ve enjoyed even just a little bit throughout the day it blows me away how good God is. The craziest thing is that it is like this huge snowball effect. You just start noticing all the little things that God is doing. Then you get joyful and thankful with a heart of praise, then God just starts doing more and more amazing things that blow you away and the blessings just start getting bigger and more amazing.
I feel like I’m at the point right now where I can honestly hardly believe how good God is. He is meeting all the desires of my heart even the little ones and I feel like I have the greatest life in the world. I am in Bangkok right now and tommorrow I get to meet with my best friend Rob who happens to be arriving in Bangkok tommorrow night. The chances that I would be available to spend time with him and our schedules fit perfectly is no coincidence. I got to spend time with my other best friend Tim in Israel. I had a desire for six years to kayak the Nile and almost randomly we get to raft and kayak the Nile in Uganda. I’ve loved Egypt for so long and our whole squad got kind of rerouted so that we could spend a day in Egypt and see the pyramids and the sphynx and the Cairo museum. Those are just some of the huge ones.
Albert Einstein said
“You can live your life as if nothing is a miracle or as if everything is a miracle”
I choose to believe in an incredibly loving God who delights in the details of our lives and loves to bless and amaze us with His love. It’s so easy to not get caught up in the times when it feels like He didn’t come through if I’m living overwhelmed in how many ways he comes through and gently shows His love through the circumstances of my life. I choose to attribute every good thing to God and not random chance or coincidence and it’s one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I still doubt, I still fail, I still get frustrated and discouraged by circumstance, but when I remember this and take time to spend time focusing on everything that God is currently doing it changes my perspective radically and imparts hope and joy in my heart.
What sort of things do you do to keep your joy and amazement in God? I love you guys. Have a good day.
