Tuesday, May 13, 2014

5 Ways to Embrace a New Life


Every now and then there is a person – and perhaps you’ve experienced this personally – who is sick and tired of being sick and tired.
Life, the way we’ve chosen to live it, or the way it’s become, or because of the circumstances that have occurred, has become impossible, hopeless, even not worth living. We may even look at our lives as being full of nice possessions and good experiences and still feel empty. Maybe, even after meeting all our goals, we still haven’t experienced the feelings we long expected to. Possibly those dreams held for decades have been dashed against the rocks of a reality we hate to reconcile but find we have to.
The old life has run its solemn course. We honoured it the best we could.
The Christian life is the viable alternative – even if you already call yourself Christian. This new life of Christianity is a regenerated life or it’s nothing at all. It is everything the former and nothing about the latter, but many people have genuinely tried it and tasted no lasting difference.
There are at least five ways to come to the precipice of a new life in your old body, mind and soul in order to gaze into a new possibility:
1.      Acknowledge this as your rock bottom experience; a God-appointed time to awaken from the slumber of spiritual lethargy.
2.      Re-organise life in keeping with biblical principles for living; arrange life in faith to the promises of God’s Word. See that God is a promise-keeper.
3.      Throw away every selfish pursuit, but arrange for wise sustenance of self. There is a great difference between self-indulgence and rest.
4.      Chase after an experience with God – to know what it feels like to enjoy his loving, assuring and life-changing Presence.
5.      Engage in helping others with no thought of return. Help others in secret. Take no credit for doing nice things. Hide your blessings. Keep the best secrets. (Ensure that whatever you do that no harm can come to anyone.)
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A new life is one decision away. God turns to us in our turning to him. The old life is no waste from the perspective of a new life, because the new life has all its meaning from the perspective of the old life. Jesus is making all things new; choice is all that stands between old and new.
© 2014 S. J. Wickham.

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