How do you get to live the life you want? How do you get to step into your fullest potential and live in your greatest purpose? How do you get there? What are the step by step directions to get to that place? How do you become that person … the person God envisioned when he created you? How do you get to a place in your life where your desires align with God’s desires and they become your reality?

I have your answer. I know the way there. The passage is one you won’t like, but it’s there for you. Here it is … THE LIFE YOU WANT IS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF ALL THE STUFF YOU DON’T WANT TO DO.

As long as you keep avoiding the hard stuff, delaying the next step that scares you, and waiting for this to all be easier, you will sacrifice the life you want.

What is this life you want? What are your deepest, purest desires, and is it okay to want them? Psalm 37:4 “Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart’s desires.” When you delight in the Lord, you find your joy, peace and fulfillment in him. This is when your desires come in alignment with God’s desires. This is when the life you want parallels the life God created you for. And this is where God can bring you to your heart’s desires.

Then, the only thing holding you back from living the life that both you and God want, is all the stuff you don’t want to do. When you overcome that, then girl, you’re realizing your fullest potential and living in your greatest purpose.

Your journey to your life’s purpose is full of things you will not want to do. Things you don’t feel qualified to do. Things you are scared to do. Things you are too darn tired to do. Things you don’t understand. This is why FAITH is required. Hebrews 11:6 “It is impossible to please God without faith.” Why? Because without faith you won’t do what you need to do. Without faith you will just stay right here and not take the next scary step. Without faith you will settle for less when you were created for more. And that does not please God. God created you with all of this potential to live a life beyond your dreams, and his desire is for you to actually start living that life. For this, you must have faith.

Faith in action. Not just faith in thought. Faith that moves your feet and pushes you forward. Faith that says “Lord, here I am on the edge and I’m jumping. You’re either going to catch me or teach me how to fly here.” Faith that knows the Spirit of God lives within you, and that Spirit makes the impossible possible.

Jonah was a man of God who wanted to do good. He wanted to live a great life. He wanted to make an impact. He wanted to follow God’s good plan for his life. But when God asked him to go to Nineveh, his feet didn’t want to move. His fears overwhelmed his faith. He didn’t want to go there because the people were wicked and he knew it would be hard. Instead of going to Nineveh, he got on a boat going the other way. The easier way. And what happened to Jonah?

The same thing that happens to us when we avoid the hard stuff. Life starts falling apart. We face harder things on the easy route than we ever would have on the avoided preconceived harder route.

We don’t want to go to the gym. We don’t want to eat healthy. We don’t want to drink water. We avoid these things, and then we face the really hard stuff as a result. We face illness and disease, not being able to do the things we want to do, and looking in the mirror at a body we hate. Wouldn’t it have just been easier to do the hard stuff in the beginning? Yes, the stuff you didn’t want to do? But you didn’t so now you face even harder things that you REALLY don’t want to do.

We don’t want to have those tough conversations, so we avoid them. Things grow worse, problems grow bigger, and distance is created in a relationship you never wanted to be a stranger in. Now ridiculously hard decisions are being made like who gets the kids on Christmas and where will the dog live. Darn, why did we allow it to get here? Because we were busy avoiding all the things we didn’t want to do, now we don’t get to live the life we wanted to live.

Jonah was on a boat heading in the exact opposite direction of where God had told him to go. What he thought was the easier way. And of course it was NOT smooth sailing. A ferocious storm comes upon them and the boat begins to sink. Yip, storms tend to happen when we’re heading in the wrong direction. Yip, sinking occurs when we’re avoiding the hard stuff. The easy way becomes the hardest darn way after all.

And this is how Jonah ends up in the water being swallowed by a whale. This is how things get a whole lot worse for him. He was avoiding the hard stuff, taking what he thought was the easier way. So in the stomach of a whale he sat for 3 days. And there, he made some deals. Some deals if God would get him out of this, he would go to Nineveh and do what God wanted him to do. The thing he should have done in the first place, but fear held him back. A desire for what was easiest led him to the hardest possible way there.

After Jonah’s earnest prayer, God caused the whale to spit him out onto a beach. Jonah 3: 1 “Then the Lord spoke to Jonah a second time: “Get up and go to the great city of Nineveh, and deliver the message I have given you.”

Second chance! And this time, Jonah went. He went afraid. He went uncertain. He went feeling unequipped and unqualified to these wicked people of Nineveh to tell them what God had said. And to his surprise, when he got there and gave them God’s message, they didn’t attack him. They didn’t try to kill him. They actually listened. They changed their ways immediately and God saved them. It was pretty darn easy afterall.

What if God had always planned for Jonah’s mission to be this simple? What if he had already prepared the heart of the people to hear this message and they were ready to change? What if it was never going to be that hard after all?

Jonah made it all so much harder than it needed to be. He never had to be on a sinking boat going in the wrong direction. He never had to be thrown overboard into the sea. He never had to be swallowed by a whale. All of this happened because he avoided what he thought was the hard stuff that he didn’t want to do. In the end, he saw it really wasn’t that hard after all, he created the hardest part himself.

And we do the same. Our avoidance of what we think is going to be hard creates even harder things in the future.

Hey sister, what if God has already gone before you where you are so afraid? What if he has already made a way and it won’t be nearly as hard as you imagine? What if, in fact, it will be surprisingly simple? And what if you are self-creating the hardship by avoiding what you know you need to do here? What if he is offering you a 2nd chance now?

The life you want is available to you. I’m talking about the life you really want … the life that aligns with God’s desires for you. That deep down in your soul desire that moves you towards your purpose. But to get there, you’re going to have to do the stuff you don’t want to do. You’re going to have to face it head on instead of avoiding it. You’re going to have to show up with faith bigger than your fear. This is what pleases God. This is where you see the miraculous movement of the Almighty.

Do the hard stuff. Don’t avoid it. This is the way to the life you want.