Life Without Limits

Too often we tell ourselves we aren’t smart enough or attractive enough or talented enough to pursue our dreams. We buy into what others say about us, or we put restrictions on ourselves. What’s worse is that when you consider yourself unworthy, you are putting limits on how God can work through you!

When you give up on your dreams, you put God in a box. After all, you are His creation. He made you for a purpose. Therefore your life cannot be limited any more than God’s love can be contained.

Excerpted from Life Without Limits by Nick Vujicic

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Daily Reflection:

What “impossible” dreams do you need to trust God for?

God’s Plan A

A young man squandered his inheritance on wild living and prostitutes. During a famine, he came to his senses and reasoned, Even my father’s hired hands have enough to eat. I know what I’ll do. I will go back to my father and say to him,

Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of
being called your son. Please take me on as a hired servant. (Luke 15:18–19)

This was his Plan B. So in desperation he rehearsed his speech and started for home. Then something unexpected happened.

While he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him. (verse 20)

Then the son started to tell his father the speech he had [ … ]

God Knows You Intimately

I know everything about you. From far away I know what you’re thinking. I’m up-to-date on the details of your life. I’m right beside you—wherever you go. My powerful hands tend to the intricate details of your life. I was there when you were put together. I prepared each day of your life before you were born. I think about you all the time. And I’m ready to lead you to eternal life.
From Psalm 139

WARRANTY NOTES: The One who knows you best loves you most.

Excerpted from God’s Little Book of Guarantees – OH by Heather Kopp

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Daily Reflection:

God knows you better than anyone. How does your knowledge of that fact affect the way you live your daily life?

Grace Over Fairness

In order to untangle us from the web we had spun for ourselves, [God] had to do something very unfair. He had to send his son to this earth to die for sins he didn’t commit.

Is Christianity fair? It is certainly not fair to God. Christians believe that God sent his son to die for your sins and mine. Fairness would demand that we die for our own sins. But the good news is that God opted for grace and mercy over fairness.

Excerpted from How Good is Good Enough? by Andy Stanley

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Daily Reflection:

How is your life different because God shows you grace instead of fairness?

The Words of Christ

Think about getting to know the God who created the universe. What would it be like to know Him on a first-name basis—or, even better, to know Him so intimately that you could call Him your best friend, even your dad? Imagine what it would be like if you could consistently experience His presence and a level of peace and joy that no adversity could vanquish. That’s exactly what will happen as you begin to focus on the words of Christ.

Excerpted fromThe Greatest Words Ever Spoken by Steven K. Scott

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Daily Reflection:

How has knowing Jesus and studying His words helped your relationship with God the Creator grow?

Can’t Help but Worship

Worship is simply about value. The simplest definition I can give is this: Worship is our response to what we value most.

That’s why worship is that thing we all do. It’s what we’re all about on any given day. Because worship is about saying, “This person, this thing, this experience (this whatever) is what matters most to me…it’s the thing I put first in my life.”

That “thing” might be a relationship. A dream. Friends. Status. Stuff. A name. Some kind of pleasure. Whatever name you put on it, this thing or person is what you’ve concluded in your heart is worth most to you. And whatever is worth most to you is—you guessed it—what you worship.

Worship tells us what we value most. As a result, worship determines our actions, becoming the driving force for all we do… [ … ]

Godly Goal Management

Whenever goal keeping characterizes my day, I find that I am intense and joyless. Goals make my life hard. They often become an end in themselves instead of useful tools. Goal keeping even becomes a way that I measure my worth; it keeps me focused on the destination instead of the journey.

I’ve learned the hard way that goal obsession is not freedom. Jesus came that I might live a very different way. His purpose for my life is characterized by hopes, not goals. Hopes are not demands, not measurements, not burdens; they reveal direction for my life and show me what to long for. Yet, unlike goals, hopes demand nothing of me.

Living a life set free to hope is living a life of joy.

Excerpted from 101 Cups of Water by CD Baker

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Daily Reflection:

How [ … ]

Under Orders

If I fail to live as I’m instructed, I undermine my own credibility to remind or teach my family to live as they’re instructed. How can I credibly teach others to obey God if I don’t? You and I need to make sure we are obeying as well, and that we are providing a climate where obedience can flourish.

Such a climate begins with our own respect for and adherence to Scripture. We cannot take our cues from our culture. We must return to drink deeply from the headwaters. Christian thought springs directly from the nature of God and its revelation in His Word. Every major tenant of our faith is a matter of revelation not explanation. Each is a mystery to be learned no way other than by revelation. We know what we know by taking Him at [ … ]

The Signature of Jesus

The signature of Jesus, the Cross, is the ultimate expression of God’s love for the world. The church is the church of the crucified, risen Christ only when it is stamped with his signature; only when it faces outward and moves with him along the way of the Cross. Turned inward upon itself in bickering and theological hairsplitting, the church loses its identity and its mission.

Excerpted from The Signature of Jesus by Brennan Manning

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Daily Reflection:

Is the signature of Jesus stamped on your life?

The Ultimate Designer

In the silence I heard two sentences. The first was “Why don’t you let the church relax and be who I made her to be?” The second was “Why don’t you relax and be who I made you to be?” That was it. As fast as the moment had come, it was over.

I began to cry again. Other than the first moment when I knew I was forgiven and accepted by God, when I was seven years old, I had never heard more liberating words. How simple. How profound. How consistent with all that I knew about God and his love for me. If God had indeed
created me, then why didn’t I trust how God intended to use me? Doesn’t it make sense that with God, the Ultimate Designer, form and function would be totally aligned?

Excerpted [ … ]