Are You Defined By What You Want?
To live for what we long for is like being a small boat on the raging sea - we are always being tossed about.
What do you long for? To be popular? To get your driver's license? A new gaming system? What we long for can give us a false hope that tomorrow will be better than today.
To live for what we long for is like being a small boat on the raging sea - we are always being tossed about. If our plans go well, we feel great and hopeful, as if nothing could ever go wrong. When things go bad in our plan, we feel terrible and hopeless, as if nothing is ever going to work out.
Who you are is not based on what you long for. Your identity is based on what Jesus Christ has done for you. Look to him and to what he has already done for you, and find your satisfaction in him.
Read James 4:13-17
What are your plans for the future? What does James say about making plans and talking about them? (See James 4:14.)
Discuss with a group or your family if there are situations and plans that they are expecting to work out in a certain way. Ask them what they would think and how they would feel if things didn't work out the way they expected.
Prayer
Pray that God will direct your longings in line with his longings for your life.
James 4:13-17 NKJV
13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit”;
14 whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.
15 Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.”
16 But now you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.
17 Therefore, to him who knows to do good and does not do it, to him it is sin.
This one is a little hard for me, I used to have big hopes and big dreams of things, but that really wasn't me.. that was actually more like the thoughts of my ex wife.. I was just kind of there for the ride and to bring the money in.. my hopes and dreams was to have a piece of land to call my own to live and work it and in doing so be able to enjoy the simple things of life as we are meant to do as opposed to living for money to have things... I have found in my journey that you have more by having less... it has allowed me to learn more about my faith and to grow by watching God reveal things to me..
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