Our lives are supposed to make sense. We all know that life can be very unpredictable, but God has made us promises in His Word, and His promises are fail-proof. He tells us in 2Corinthians 1:20(NLT), “For all of God’s promises have been fulfilled in Christ with a resounding “Yes!” And through Christ, our “Amen” (which means “Yes”) ascends to God for his glory.” God has already stamped “BLESSED” on our lives, and all we have to do is say, “YES!” Ephesians 1:3(NLT) declares, “All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ.” God didn’t withhold one good thing from us but has given us every good thing through Jesus Christ! Our issue is that we don’t fully believe this. We don’t say “YES!” because we can’t imagine that we can have an existence that matches our greatest hopes and dreams.
God isn’t moving us around like puppets or orchestrating our every move. He doesn’t have to do this in order to bless us, and that’s really good news! God is showing us that no matter the condition, circumstance, or situation, the outcome is always victorious when it comes to the promises of His Word. When our faith is firmly planted in God’s Word and our heart is to live through the example of Jesus Christ, all things will work together for our good. Romans 8:28 tells us this.
In Luke 1:37(ESV), Jesus Christ declared, “For nothing will be impossible with God.” This verse is ground-breaking, dream-making truth, but somehow it gets lost on us as we shift from adolescence to full-blown adulthood. We lose the momentum and stamina to simply believe what God says and run with it. Instead, we over-analyze and over-think it until the enthusiasm for God’s promises is completely obliterated. We’re too indecisive to say “YES”, and too doubtful to even say “Maybe”. God designed the universe in such a way that it has no tolerance for ambivalence. So, our “Maybe’s” are translated as a “NO”, and comes to the table as a lack of faith.
So often we’ve retreated to our comfort zones, and we do this at the exact moment the winds of change are blowing in our direction and are set to carry us in a new and destined direction. Change is upon us, but we’re so used to retreating when discomfort is involved that, again, we fail to listen to our spirit. We neglect ourselves at the deepest level because we will not believe in what we cannot see.
Genesis 1:26 tells us that God created us in His very own image. He is the Creator! He is creative! He has perfect faith, and He employed His faith to create all that we survey! Genesis 1:3(NLT) tells us, “Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.” He spoke with all the authority of His perfect being and faith, and the universe had no other choice but to respond. God has given us this same creative ability through faith. All of us have it! Romans 12:3(NKJV), “For I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith.” All of us have a measure of faith, and we use it every moment of each day. It takes faith to get up from where you are sitting and move to a different location. It takes faith to lay down at night, and it takes faith to get up and start each new day. Faith is required for every action we take, and we need to understand this.
Most of us are operating faith unintentionally. We don’t think about the mental, spiritual, emotional, and physical cooperation necessary for us to simply take a breath, but we need to make a shift. If we are God’s children, life is going to bring us to a point where we have no other choice, we must become very intentional when it comes to applying our faith in God. He tells us to walk by faith and not by sight. This means we are to pray to God to give us a vision of what He wants to give us, and then we are to move in faith accordingly.
Once we have the promise and the vision, we can call those things that are not as though they were. Our problem is that we have forgotten this. James 4:2-3(NLT) plainly tells us, “2b Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it. 3 And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure.” We will not receive the promise because we will not ask the Father for the vision and run with it. We have forgotten that the path to our destinies is made clear when faith is expressed through love. Without understanding this, many of us lose our way.
God tells us in Jeremiah 29:11 that He knows the plans He has for our lives, and they are good plans that give us a future and a hope. We’re not the ones with the plan, He is, and this is why our faith must be firmly planted in Him and we must be motivated each day by our love for Him and for others. We were created to live our lives in partnership with Him and His agenda. If we miss this, we miss everything.
Faith in God and a heart filled with love for Him makes our lives make sense. He tells us in Hebrews 11:36(ESV), “And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” It is very easy to place too much faith in our own ability and effort or in the ability of other people and institutions. We are disappointed when they don’t follow through and let us down, and we can be equally disappointed in ourselves. God tells us to depend on Him because He knows what is best for our lives. Get radically focused on your relationship with Heavenly Father. Focus on His love, grace, and mercy, and seek Him and His righteousness first. This is the “YES!” we need in our lives, and when saying yes to His plan is on our minds and in our hearts, everything else in our lives will fall into place. ■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
“Simply Say ‘YES!’”, written by JMack, 4theChristianMan.com© 2023. All rights reserved. All praise and honor to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.