Hi, I am Beverley Watkins with Global Impact Ministries and welcome to God Today. I love the word “today”, you know? We have to do stuff today that is going to change our tomorrow. Often, I get around people and they are always telling me, “Oh, Beverley, this is tough, and that’s tough, and the next thing.” And you know what I always say? “If you don’t like your life, change it.” That kind of takes you back because you think, “This is my life, this is my lot, and this is what I have to struggle through everyday and kind of get a hold of.” The bottom line is that is not true. Jesus died and shed His blood so you could grab a hold of everything you need to take yourself out of where you are today and come into His plan for you tomorrow. It is going to take some work and it is going to take you deciding that, “I am not going to wallow in the pit of self-pity every single day. I am actually going to believe what He did for me. I am going to grab hold of it and I am going to press on and do what He has called me to do.”
I love this scripture, it is one of my favorite scriptures. It is Philippians 3:13, it says, “Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended. One thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forward to those things which are ahead.” You know, I love that because so often in our walk with the Lord, we get so focused on, “Where you are right now, the struggles you have, the challenges you have, or even those things you have been in that you have been forgiven of, but the enemy keeps reminding you of them. You know what? There comes a time where you have to say, “God has called me for better things and greater things than where I am right now. I am going to forget what is behind me. What I have been forgiven of, what God has dealt with me for, I take the lesson out of it, but I am not going to drag that baggage one day longer. I am going to leave it right here. I am going to leave those things behind. I am going to press on. I am going to lean towards.
You see, we have to lean into the things of God. We have to stretch for them, we have to reach for those things. It is in the reaching, and it is in the pressing towards Him that He begins to make you into a different shape. He begins to craft you and form you into a new person. A person walking in victory. A person walking in everything that He has for you. But, you have to make the decision that, “I am not going to let that stuff hold me back. I am not going to be pulled in a backwards direction. I am not going to be pulled down. I am going to be pulled up and forward by Him. He is the one that wrote the book about me. He is the one who has a plan and a purpose for me. Today I am going to believe Him.
Right now, I want to pray for you. If you are feeling a little dragged down, if you feel like the baggage is getting to you – let it go today. We take it off right now in the name of Jesus. Father, I say I believe you have a plan and a future for me. I know everything I need to get into that place was given to me in Jesus. I thank you that as I take hold of your hand this morning and I begin to reach for you, and I begin to press for you, you are pulling me into a new place. You are bringing me out of every pit of despair. Every place of hopelessness. Every place of struggle, every place of frustration – you are pulling me out of it, that I might attain to everything that God has for me today. In Jesus’ name. Amen.