Birthdays are just FUN! At my last birthday, my son prayed a wonderful thing over me as he gave thanks for the meal and for my life. He asked the Lord to give me so much more of Himself this next year – and that I would know Him increasingly. What a blessing! That expresses exactly what my desire is for this next year. It was such a sweet surprise. Still, every year I’ve lived has been challenging. Why would this year be any different? Maybe life resources and tools are implements God uses to help us achieve our desires. Life resources and tools have made a huge impact in my life.
That prayer reminded me of the theme I chose this year for my life: “First Love.” My desire is that Jesus be my First, Best, and Most. I want to remain in His love in every life development. Is this a reasonable goal, especially the way life is so unpredictable, painful at times, and full of troubles? Is my selected year theme and heart’s desires nothing more than wishful thinking or hopeful sentiment? How will I engage resources and tools to succeed? Do I have enough resolve? Life has a knack for unraveling.
Your Journey
In addition to all that, sometimes God takes you where you may not want to go. Yet, this path, engaged by faith, changes a person. It helps you trust God as you live inside His love and protection even in hard times.
How will I engage God’s love for others? The genuine caring, kind interventions, prayers offered up at any time – night or day, creative provision for needs. These also involve life resources and tools. One of the greatest things to ask God to give another person (or yourself) is more of His Spirit. Receiving this undeserved gift of more of His Spirit fills your heart with two components critical to healthy, godly living: wisdom and revelation. You need these two elements to make life resources and tools your reality.
Wisdom and Revelation
Wisdom – This quality gives knowledge of what is right, true, and timely. It helps you know the right thing to do in life situations. With wisdom, you find yourself using discernment and exercising insight with deeper understanding of God. Wisdom helps you carry out God’s purposes with genuine joy.
Revelation – This gift prefaces important things – like disclosing helpful information. It can announce a critical point that turns an issue. Sometimes it showcases consistent, every-day perseverance in healthy practices that eventually bring desired results. Revelation means you are alert and aware as you live.
You need wisdom and revelation to know God intimately and increasingly. Is your goal to know God better? Are you living in wisdom and revelation every day? God promises to give you both if you ask Him. So ask. Then take another step – study and apply the Scriptures. Then obey what God says. He will help you work with His life resources and tools if you exercise and stay in His wisdom and revelation!
Life Resources and Tools
In Eph. 1:15-24, Paul says God’s entire arsenal and supply is immediately available to you in three ways:
- To know the hope God has called you into. Couldn’t you use more hope? I can. And so can others around you. Spread it lavishly in all you do and say. Be an encourager with God’s hope. Sometimes you have to speak and act in hope by faith because you don’t see the results yet.
- To know the riches of what has been promised to you as a child of God. You have a rich inheritance of promises. Are you engaging God’s promises and standing firmly on these riches?
- To know the power unmatched anywhere in the universe – available to you every day in every life issue. This power is tenacious and gives you needed strength. It raised Jesus from the dead.
These three amazing provisions from God make it possible for you to live intentionally. God intends that you live free from sin’s curse. He also wants you be lifted up, everyday, to His original design for humanity. This means you will be ruling in partnership and harmony – here and now on earth before you get to heaven – with your Heavenly Father. You will also be enjoying life’s delights and being free.
You can have a very powerful, ordinary, practical life that impacts others around you, starting with your family. God’s hope, riches, and power help you live well. These three open God’s entire pantry to you – as well as His weapons arsenal, His medical supply closet, His “life staples” storeroom, His libraries, galleries, meadows, and parks. All these and more are for your success and enjoyment by faith through His wisdom and revelation because of God’s hope, riches, and power. These three elements help you see your path and help others around you!
How Will You Apply Your Life Resources and Tools?
Have you thought about the level of hope in your life? Do you ever come up short? What about riches in Christ? The promise is to have ample, overflowing, no shortage. Is that your story? Are you living inside God’s promises? Finally, how strong and effective is God’s power in your life and relationships? Are you living within the power that birthed creation, raised Jesus from the dead, secured eternity for God’s people, and ensures successful godly living each day? Or are you living in a poor imitation you pulled together on your own?
Why not go after hope, riches, and power from God? Why not go after more of Jesus? You have life resources and tools at your fingertips. All you need is faith to receive. Then pick them up and use them.
What action steps can you take to live more effectively in God’s hope, riches, and power in your daily life? Are you taking advantage of life resources and tools He has made available to you? I encourage you to write these three down, review them often, give thanks for each, and hold yourself accountable to live in them. Don’t just think about and talk about them? Would you say you are living a successful and godly life? Are you effectively engaging God’s hope, riches, and power? How can you practically pass these on to others? Why not make your life count this year?
And – HAPPY BIRTHDAY !!
Sometime this year, you will turn another year older. So live your life for God, and enjoy Him every day in the next year of your life. God loves you – so much!
Article developed from Eph. 1:15-23.
Another Resource
I’m Not A Loser: How to Change Old Habits And Patterns
Description – It’s hard to change habits and establish new patterns. Old, unhealthy patterns can feel like a ball and chain you drag around. It seems to take a mammoth effort to dump the old and introduce the new. Practicing new strokes takes energy, focus, and resolve. It almost seems easier to just put up with the old even though you know it’s not your best – or the best for you. So, what do you do?
