For a long time, I have let things or what people have said about me clutter my mind and heart from seeing what God was trying to speak to me. I have let false labels and slander trip me up from seeing things the way God does.
I was cluttered with so many false things and insecurities that I did not know which way to turn at times, but God did show me the way out from these things. He can do the same for you if you are ready for a leap of faith.
Now as I inch closer to being thirty in a few months I see how foolish that was in the past. Now I cannot go back and change what has already happened. I cannot change what I have said or done in the past. And I cannot change people's minds or the way they think about me or see me.
All I can do is leave it in God's hands. His labels are what matter and carry weight in this world. Nothing else stands up to God's standards and how He sees His children. God sees us in His image not the faulty worldly standards or the cultures mislabeled categories.
The point is God does not want me to put on the labels that people in the past have tried to put on me. Whether it was from trying to find a music teacher to help me learn how to sing that told me I could not do it because of a hearing loss. Or from mature middle school girls who thought it was cool to say slanderous things to make themselves feel or look better for a temporary time.
These kinds of labels do not matter and do not hold a candlestick to the labels God gives us as His children who are set apart and chosen, seen. But we do have to make room for God to move and speak in our lives. We have to let go and release what is not true to receive the blessings God has for us.
"Put on then, as God's chosen ones holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other, as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony."(Colossians 3:12-14ESV).
And if God does not have room to move he won't have enough space to light what we need to see. Everything inside of our hearts, minds, lives, schedules will be cluttered with unnecessary stuff which won't do us any good but keep us distracted.
Making room for God to move in your life and heart means humbling yourself before Him. God needs room to soften the hardest of hearts. If our hearts are crowded with things, schedules, or just plain business we will be distracted not directed or led by God alone but distractions.
Moreover, while waiting for God to fulfill His promises we must also make room for our perspectives to be aligned with God's truth. Otherwise, we will be solely focused on what we do not have or what others have while we are within the waiting period.
It would be the comparison cycle we would be stuck in. Instead of being rooted and grounded in the truth of God. Which is why we must wait with anticipation with expectation, while completely focused on Jesus and what He spoke over us.
I share this because God has had to clear out the clutter of not only my heart but also my mind. In what I thought and how I saw my identity. God has had to remove idols, insecurities, and false labels that other people and even myself have tried to label me with that were based on lies.
But God has a way of leaving what needs to be left unsaid by removing the lies of the enemy and other people who tried to put the wrong stuff attached to our identities. The point is God has a way of restoring our identities and how we see ourselves so we can walk in truth in His love.
God peels back the false labels or categories so we can see the truth we are chosen and labeled with His image, not our past sins.
"But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy."(1 Peter 2:9-10ESV).
God has a way of clearing the clutter of what has been said and the questions that come up which can mislead us down a dark path of unbelief or even pride. He has this way of clearing the clutter by removing things we thought we depended on. Yet the only thing we can rely upon is Jesus Himself.
Everything else fails in this world. People will and do fail us because they are human finite beings too just like us. And having every single minute scheduled in our lives is not the answer because we will come to a day when we look back and say where did my life go?
Schedules and being busy only leads to dissatisfaction, discontentment, and burn out. God comes in and recks our schedules because we cannot schedule the presence of God or a move of the Holy Spirit.
Which is why making room for God to move in our lives is important.
We must be in tune with the Holy Spirit so we can hear God speak to us. If we do not make room or time for God we will only be going through the motions of life and not living with purpose but only schedules.
Honestly, if we look back at the year 2020 we can see it was not a year for schedules but unscheduled moments here and there where God moved but we did have to stop and look for His moves in our lives.
We need room to receive what God is doing in our lives if we do not then we are merely stuck in this mentality of striving on our own which does not work or lead us to success but leads to misery. The reason it leads to misery is that it puts everything back on our shoulders instead of letting it rest in the hands of Jesus.
Do you have room to receive what God is doing in your life?
Are you willing to submit to God and His authority instead of living by your own rules?
Are you willing to choose God's will over your selfish desires?
Are you open to receive the new thing God is doing within your heart?
Do you want to feast on God's word and truth? Or the lies of the enemy or other people?
Are you basing what you believe on what God says? Or what is said or swayed by the masses that may or may not be true?
Here's the bottom line we cannot go back and redo what we have already done or said in the past. We cannot rewrite history or make revisions to it, but we can learn from the past and from those who have gone before us. We can learn from their victories and their failures, mistakes so that they are not repeated.
And we can learn how to approach God with more humility than those who have gone before us. Moreover, we can learn to remove the idol things which have cluttered and distracted us from seeing the truth God is speaking to us.
We must make room to release what has tripped us up in the past to receive what good things He has for us.
Jesus is speaking to you and ready to fill what is lacking in your life are you ready to receive it with an open and willing heart?
References:
English Standard Version Study Bible (2008) Crossway Publishing, Wheaton ILL,
Picture by: wix.com
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