Hi there. I am Havilah Cunnington and welcome to God Today. I am the founder and leader of Truth To Table, a ministry out of Northern California. Today I want to share with you the importance of understanding how to keep your life safe. You know, when we don’t know where we begin and where somebody else ends, we can get in trouble. The Bible says in Proverbs that “like a city whose walls are broken down is a man who lacks self-control. A man that understands where they begin and where they end and how to stay safe.”
Did you know that God holds you entirely responsible for 3 specific areas? When you get to heaven, He is going to ask you how you stewarded those areas. The first area that we are entirely responsible for is our feelings. Our emotions are ours. And can I just say something that sometimes I think the Church gets wrong? Your emotions are not wrong. In fact, your emotions have no moral value. The Bible says you can be angry and sin not. So the moment of feeling does not dictate the morality of what you do with that feeling. Feelings are like lights. I am one of those people that I don’t know whether I need gas in the car until my light comes on or I need to check my engine until my light comes on. That is how He created feelings for us. Those feelings show us what is going on inside of us. The things we cannot see.
So, the best thing to do is to take notice. Look at that emotion and ask the Holy Spirit to help you know what you need to do whether it is healing, or freedom, or just having more of it.
The second area that God holds us entirely responsible for is our attitudes. If your feelings are what you feel about life, attitudes are what you think about life. Attitudes come from your core values. Your belief systems. They are really grounded and oftentimes how you grew up, how people thought about life. And so, this is why in the Bible when it says, “We need to renew our minds,” it is critical. Our mind renewed – the Bible says it very clearly in Romans 12 – when our mind is renewed, we know the will of God. So, when our thoughts are renewed and we think what God is thinking, then we know what He wants to do in our lives. And it requires us to partner with Him for transformation, Your attitudes need to be transformed through your mind renewal. It is very, very critical.
Someone can say, “Have a good attitude.” I can have a good attitude for a few minutes. But I am not going to have a long-distance good attitude unless I go into my belief systems or my core values and begin to root out the bad thinking and begin to put the truth inside. Then, lastly, your choices. What we do in life. It is not what we feel about life or what we think about life, but it is what we do with our lives. We have to take 100% responsibility for our choices.
Now, I don’t know about you. Some days I don’t want to take responsibility for my choices because I don’t like the consequences of them. I want somebody else to be responsible so I don’t feel blamed or overwhelmed. But the truth is, when somebody else holds that part of the choice, they are powerful over you. And you give your power away. So, if you are in the garden and God comes looking for you and says, “Hey, where are you? Did you eat the fruit?” Instead of saying, “Adam made me do it, or Eve made me do it,” if you take responsibility and say, “I did. I did do that, help me.” God, the Bible says will be quick to respond to heal us and restore us.
Those 3 areas allow me to stay safe. Look at it like this. When God came looking for Adam and Eve, the Bible says that in the cool of the day He would walk with them and talk with them. I look at that as our lives. The Holy Spirit wants to wander around our thoughts. Our attitudes. Our choices. He wants to survey our garden. He wants to say, “Don’t grow that. Pull that out. Plant a little bit more of that.” Until our lives begin to be abundant and flourishing.
It is really important that we steward that yard. How do we do that? The way we steward is we know we are entirely responsible. We are the owners of that yard. And so, whenever I am feeling overwhelmed, I ask myself. “Are these my feelings? Are these my attitudes? Are these my choices? And if they are not, then I am not responsible for that. I cannot waste another minute worrying about somebody else’s ownership and responsibility.
I want to encourage you with this reality today. Instead of feeling bad, I think we should choose to feel obedient. So, instead of feeling bad about all the things, “I don’t want them to feel hurt. I don’t want them to think I am this way.” What if you said, “I am purposing to be more obedient to the stewardship and the ownership of which God has given me.” I’ll tell you what. Life can change. It will give you the courage to do that.
I want to pray for you today. That you would learn how to steward your yard with diligence, and excellence, and abundance. So, Lord, I thank you for every person that is watching this today. I thank you that you created this beautiful yard. Where they get to be in a partnership, a relationship with you. I thank you that you gave them emotions to show them how they feel and that you use those emotions to give us insight into what we believe, or think, or experience in life. I think that our emotions can be the keys to intercession and feeling the heart of God.
I also thank you that you have given us our attitudes. What we think about life and our belief systems and values. I am so grateful that it can change when we want it to. And we are not stacked with what we were born with. I ask you would help us steward our attitudes to uproot those stinking, negative, toxic thoughts. And we would put truth where truth needs to be so we can begin to build that belief system of clarity, and purity, and discipline.
And, Lord, I also ask for our choices. Lord, I know sometimes we can pick our choices, but we can’t pick our consequences. So, I didn’t want to think about the consequences because we think we can’t go anywhere from here. But, I ask right now, that you could give us the courage to take responsibility for every choice that we have. And we would surrender it under the Lordship of Jesus Christ to trust you. You are going to help us. Lord, I pray that when you come at the cool of the garden, to come to talk to us and walk with us, we would walk with God. We would walk with God in the garden of our lives. Help them. Help us. Bless our lives, God, and let our lives be an abundant overflow of the reality of walking with you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.