daily devotional

Today you and I woke up to the opportunity to start again. An opportunity to step into the fullness of God’s grace and mercy and receive a fresh start. But sadly, most will miss this opportunity. Instead we will receive the offer of the enemy to dwell on where we screwed up yesterday. The offer to stay stuck in the past hurts and failures. The offer to identify as a victim. And we belly up to the table time and time again to accept these worthless offers of the enemy which hold us back from our potential and have us playing little in our own lives.

What if that were to stop today. What if from this day forward we recognized the offerings of the enemy and saw them for what they are. What if we were completely turned off by settling. I mean repulsed because we finally know the truth.

In 2017 I lost one of my best friends. Catina was 34 years old and larger than life. No doubt if you knew her, you loved her. She was diagnosed with cancer, given 1 to 6 months to live and sadly the shorter end of that scale became the reality. One month was all she had. We immediately went into action mode when she was diagnosed grasping at anything, absolutely anything we could do to help her. This is when we came upon the research of the affects of sugar on our bodies. Did you know sugar feeds cancer cells? If you eliminate sugar, cancer cells begin to starve. With this knowledge, I went from a brownie loving, sweet tea guzzling, closet lover of Little Debbie snacks, to completely eliminating sugar from my diet. And it was easy. You know why? Because I was completely turned off by sugar. I was repulsed because I finally knew the truth. I knew sugar could kill my best friend. I knew sugar could kill me. Now when I see the Little Debbie nutty bars that used to taunt me and call my name “eat me Pamela”, ahhhh no, I see them for what they are … that’s cancer food and I want nothing to do with it.

This is what I’m proposing. I’m proposing we see every worthless offer from the enemy for exactly what it is and let it repulse us. Be so turned off by his lousy offers that we are never fooled again. If you could see how dwelling on yesterday’s mistakes only robs you of your strength for today, wouldn’t you let yesterday go? If you could really see how today’s potential is only diminished moment by moment as you relive those past hurts and failures, wouldn’t you finally move on and promise to never ever go back? I know this much, if you could really see how playing the victim makes you pitiful, you would never see yourself as the victim again. If you could see it for what it’s worth, you would never chose to be pitiful over being powerful. Never. If you could see how lazy is going to make you feel, no one could hold you back from taking action.

If you could taste even for a moment the life that is available to you, there’s not a person in this world who could make you settle for less. Your bad habits would be broken TODAY. Your laziness would vanish. Your procrastination would be left behind immediately. Nothing could hold you back from taking action if you could get a vision of your true potential.

God has a plan for you that will blow your mind. A purpose that is bigger than you could ever dare dream or imagine. Impact beyond anything you could fathom. He has a future available specifically for you that is big, bright and beautiful. But you have to choose it.

How do you choose what God has for you? You see the enemy’s offers for what they really are and you start refusing them. The days of settling have come and gone. That’s totally last year. Procrastination is out my friend. Just as I now see sugar as cancer food and I want nothing to do with it, you need to see the truth about guilt, shame, failure, insecurities, fear, and laziness. The truth is, these things are ruining your life. They are robbing you of your destiny. They are stealing your potential right from under you and you’ve not only been allowing it, you’ve been willfully choosing it. John 10:10 says “the thief comes to kill, steal and destroy”. Haven’t we left the doors wide open for the thief? We’ve even invited him into our lives as he works in his nasty little ways.

But now you know. And when you know better, you can do better. And when you start doing better, ahhhhh my friend, this is when your life starts getting better. Here it is. This is your time.

This is hard truth and ridiculous grace. The hard truth of we’ve made the bed we lay in. There’s no one else to blame for where we are today. Looking back we see how we have settled. We see how the offering of the enemy has been embraced instead of rejected. He tricked us. We fell for it. That’s the hard truth.

Now the ridiculous grace. Psalm 103:12 says “as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” What does this mean? It means God isn’t holding our failures against us. He’s not shaking his head in disapproval over all the days of our lives we have wasted as we accepted the offerings of playing little, sitting it out, being the victim, and making a whole crapton of bad choices. No, in fact he has removed all of that from us. If you’re sitting on east, God has moved all your mess ups all the way to west. Now I admit, I’m directionally challenged, but I’m pretty sure this means he has separated me from my failures. As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.

So here we are today with our fresh start and opportunity to start again. This is our opportunity to step into the fullness of God’s grace and mercy and this time, we won’t miss the opportunity. We won’t accept the offerings of the enemy today. We now know the truth. God is offering separation from our failures. He’s offering strength and power.

Hey Jesus didn’t come and die so that you would live a defeated life. How senseless would that be? The ultimate sacrifice was made for you so that you could live the ultimate life! Don’t miss that. This is a game changer.

Once you see where you have been living defeated, you will be repulsed. And that’s exactly where we need to arrive. Repulsed by how the enemy has tricked us. Repulsed by what he has stolen from us. Repulsed by how we have been missing God’s big plan for our lives because we’ve been playing little. I’m repulsed. Aren’t you?

2 Timothy 1:7 says “For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline”

This is your truth. You have power in you. You have self-discipline in you. You are strong enough to break bad habits and make changes. You can now step into your potential and begin living the life you were created for as the person you were created to be. That starts today!