I am looking at the future and wondering what to do. The economy is hurting our business. New healthcare laws are limiting how much we can help our clients and how much we make. Six years of struggling to make business work, and all the forces of nature seem to be against us. Life these days is like trying to navigate raging white-waters on a surf board. I know that I'm not the only one. Other folks around me are undergoing far worse. It's not just me. There are times in everyone's life that life seems overwhelming and impossible.
I admit it. My first reaction is usually fear. I try to be optimistic, but fear is the first surge that I experience. I appreciate how God works during hard times. He always comes along at the right moment and nudges us. I was beginning to feel succumbed by the hopelessness of it all. I lose sight many times along the to the way, feeling the way the enemy would have me feel. Here is where I have found myself failing time and time again. I confess it.
So out of nowhere I got the almighty nudge and a hopeful reminder - the opposite of fear is faith.
"Humans are amphibians - half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time."
-C.S. Lewis
I can easily be overwhelmed or learn to navigate each new hardship with faith. Fear will always make us lose control - eventually tip us over. I believe that we are more spiritual than physical. Like the Lewis quote infers, we only have our physical bodies for a short amount of time - we are forever spirit. We must endeavor to learn to live our lives in an unseen reality.
You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.
-C.S. Lewis
I admit it. My first reaction is usually fear. I try to be optimistic, but fear is the first surge that I experience. I appreciate how God works during hard times. He always comes along at the right moment and nudges us. I was beginning to feel succumbed by the hopelessness of it all. I lose sight many times along the to the way, feeling the way the enemy would have me feel. Here is where I have found myself failing time and time again. I confess it.
So out of nowhere I got the almighty nudge and a hopeful reminder - the opposite of fear is faith.
"Humans are amphibians - half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time."
-C.S. Lewis
I can easily be overwhelmed or learn to navigate each new hardship with faith. Fear will always make us lose control - eventually tip us over. I believe that we are more spiritual than physical. Like the Lewis quote infers, we only have our physical bodies for a short amount of time - we are forever spirit. We must endeavor to learn to live our lives in an unseen reality.
You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.
-C.S. Lewis
While on this earth, bound by our flesh - we are to take the spatula of truth and flip our fears over and find our faith. Most of us have experienced this before in our lives, we have to give our fears to God and believe on Him.
"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."
-Hebrews 11:1
God doesn't always deliver us from trials that cause us fear. He desires the trials to test our faith in order that we learn to rise up with the character of Christ. I still have to relearn the lesson of faith over fear - to step out of the boat onto the water. None of us are going to make it if we try to overcome situations in the flesh. We can't balance ourselves on what we perceive with our own eyes. We have to let go and stand on what we have been taught. We are not to balance flesh and spirit. We are to walk solely in the spirit.
" ...and everything that does not come from faith is sin."
-Romans 14:23
-Romans 14:23
We are not to be drowning in fear, but walking by FAITH. We are indeed spiritual beings.
I should know this by now and I need His reminders from time to time. It's too easy to get caught up in the fear of the flesh, because it is the natural thing to do. Living in faith isn't natural. Stepping off into the unseen unknown scarey. We will struggle with it until the day we die. It's because all we each see in the mirror is flesh and bone. All we see around us from day to day are flesh and bone. It's easy to lose sight of the unseen and drown in all that is seen. Sometimes we'd rather stay in the comfortable familiar than experience life the way we were meant to live.
I should know this by now and I need His reminders from time to time. It's too easy to get caught up in the fear of the flesh, because it is the natural thing to do. Living in faith isn't natural. Stepping off into the unseen unknown scarey. We will struggle with it until the day we die. It's because all we each see in the mirror is flesh and bone. All we see around us from day to day are flesh and bone. It's easy to lose sight of the unseen and drown in all that is seen. Sometimes we'd rather stay in the comfortable familiar than experience life the way we were meant to live.
-Romans 14:17
We are to be above fear and not forever drowning. It is faithlessness that keeps us from being the beings we were created to be. If we are constantly reacting to life with fear, our lives will not be as full or as fruitful. If we are constantly succumbing to our fear, we are acting just as lost as the rest of the world. We must live by faith and discover the way we were meant to walk. We have to make that bold step each day.
"If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were precisely those who thought most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this."
-C.S. Lewis
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