There is a natural desire to enjoy and nurture the blessings we’ve been given, and we should. We should treat all our blessings with care and gratitude. But not to the exclusion of doing God’s work in the world, well beyond the borders of the blessing bubble.

When blessings become our everything, we’re no longer serving God first, but ourselves instead. Our blessings can become our captors, our masters, and if we’re not careful, our downfall.

That’s not to say we aren’t supposed to enjoy whatever we are given in this life (career success, money, people, etc). I simply believe our primary focus should never be to hold on to those things. If we make our choices based on fear of losing what we love in the world, we’re not choosing according God’s will, but our own. We have to be able to trust God enough to release our grip on our blessings and allow Him to control their ebbs and flows.

When we don’t seek to be present in ways other than attending to our own wants and needs, we won’t be seeking to serve God on His terms. We’re not put in this world to get what we want… we’re here to do whatever God asks of us.

I have been struggling with a frustration that is solely based on a worldly focus. It’s been slowly eating away at me for months now, but I’ve been too afraid to rock the boat by being honest about how I really feel. I’ve been afraid that sharing my true feelings would cause a rift, and the thought of that has been intolerable.

It’s taken me a lot of prayer and a lot of deep conversation with my husband to find the courage to listen to the promptings of God to stop keeping things in the dark. Over the last week, I’ve gotten more scriptural references about living in honesty and love than I can count.

“If in fact you have [really] heard Him and have been taught by Him, just as truth is in Jesus [revealed in His life and personified in Him], that, regarding your previous way of life, you put off your old self [completely discard your former nature], which is being corrupted through deceitful desires, and be continually renewed in the spirit of your mind [having a fresh, untarnished mental and spiritual attitude], and put on the new self [the regenerated and renewed nature], created in God’s image, [godlike] in the righteousness and holiness of the truth [living in a way that expresses to God your gratitude for your salvation]. Therefore, rejecting all falsehood [whether lying, defrauding, telling half-truths, spreading rumors, any such as these], SPEAK TRUTH EACH ONE WITH HIS NEIGHBOR, for we are all parts of one another [and we are all parts of the body of Christ].”
‭‭Ephesians‬ ‭4:21-25‬ ‭AMP‬‬

The most important thing I’ve been learning is that no matter how deeply my human side feels hurt or slighted, the spirit of God that lives in me never ceases to continue loving without condition. I’m so grateful to be learning how to set my human selfishness aside and live only in the light of God’s love. It’s not an easy lesson, but I believe it’s one of the most important lessons to learn.