We all fight battles against discouragement and fatigue, even exhaustion. The question is, How can we renew our energy, vision, creativity, and effectiveness?
One of our self-defeating false beliefs is that we can generate our own refreshment. Ironically enough, the more we see our life as a closed system that we are capable of maintaining by ourselves, the more the system breaks down.
The spiritual teachings of the Christian faith present a very different picture. Each life is meant to be an open system. We function at maximum efficiency only when God’s Spirit flows freely in and through us.
According to this understanding, our greatest challenge isn’t to control our lives; it’s to surrender more and more control to the Lord. Refreshment comes not from showering ourselves with as many resources as we can, but rather from allowing our blessings to flow through us to bless the world.
As we adopt this perspective, we discover, as Hagar did in the book of Genesis, that wells are provided for us in the desert places of our lives.
We’ll continue to explore this theme on Sunday.
I hope you’ll be with us!
God bless you always,
Evan Howard,
Minister