I’m treading the line with this one, but I know in my heart this is where a lot of people are. I’ve been there. Truth is, this place is real, and many people are experiencing it. You are called but depressed. You are anointed but you struggle with rejection and loneliness. You enjoy your ministry, but you don’t like your life. And because ministry can be a place of solace, it can also be used as an escape, which can make ministry addictive. In other words, people can add more ministry engagements to their calendar because that’s where they find themselves the happiest and after the service is over, they fall into this slump. But let me warn you; more ministry doesn’t equal happiness. It equals a busier schedule and eventually resentment to God because you served Him, doing His work, but you’re not where you want to be in the life He has given you to enjoy.

Happiness is really not the pursuit here; it’s joy. Happiness can usually be based on what’s happening. Even though there’s nothing wrong with being happy, we must come into agreement that happiness should not be placed in the hands of another person, a thing that can be taken away, or an achievement that hasn’t come yet. Of course, no one wants to feel stuck and stagnant, but to mature in this season, we should not blame others for our unhappiness. We should ask Holy Spirit what happened for us to start feeling unhappy and receive His courage to confront it. God is not just concerned about what you do for Him; He’s concerned about how you live, your state of mind, your heart attitude, the motives and intentions of your heart, and your perspective of life.
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Let’s take a moment to let the church face go. The “blessed and highly favored” responses to greetings and salutations…let them all go. Where did we lose our joy? What happened to us to not like our lives? I know this can be a painful place but take a moment to think about it. Let it bubble up in your heart. Feel it. Let Holy Spirit, the Wise Counselor, reveal this to you. Once Holy Spirit gives you revelation on this, ask Him for the strategy in which to heal. Commit to it. Ministry, people, achievements, money, and anything else in life are all extra-curricular. If you don’t have a solid stability within who you are in Him without all of this, you won’t be consistently happy with any of it. 

Many times, we place so much focus on the miracle that we don’t often think about the responsibility that comes with maintaining it. For instance, if you’re believing for a new job, there are new skills, a new work environment, and new people you will have to learn and maintain. If you’re believing for a new house, there’s a new house payment, new area, and new neighbors.

What structure is God trying to get you to submit to today? What instructions has He given you? Just because the instructions are not always “spiritual” doesn’t mean they don’t come from God.  He may be asking you to go to bed at a certain time. He may be challenging your eating habits. He may be asking you to drink more water throughout the day. What is he asking you to do?
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He’s not asking you to follow these instructions to keep you busy. He’s preparing you for the promise. Don’t abort the process simply because the instructions seem inconvenient or seem to have nothing to do with what you prayed for. He wants you to experience the promise, but He loves you enough not to give it to you until you can maintain it. The lessons He’s teaching now will help you to keep what you’re praying for. Selah. 

You know how it is, having hundreds of emails in your spam or junk mail folder. They come from all sorts of places, at least 80% of them you didn’t sign up to receive. And they keep coming until you click “unsubscribe” at the bottom of the email.

What junk mail do you have in your soul that keeps coming at you unannounced, uninvited, and unsolicited? Does your soul look like your inbox? Are there multiple messages that are sitting there without you taking any action?
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It’s time to clean them out! Unsubscribe to them! They do not pertain to where you’re going. 

Have you ever been hard on yourself? Have you been guilty of beating yourself up because you didn’t get it right the first time? Have a habit that’s hard to break?

It didn’t take overnight to create it, so it probably won’t take overnight to break it. Give yourself grace. Give yourself time. Exercise the fruit of patience on yourself.   
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Often, we feel like if we’re not hard on ourselves we give ourselves permission to fall short, but perfection is not the aim. Consistency is the goal. We don’t leap to the finish line. We get there one step at a time. 

Trauma has a way of seeping into every aspect of our lives if we allow it to. It’s an intruder. It’s rude, violating, and invasive. It doesn’t care what new relationships or new opportunities we’re engaged in currently. It doesn’t care what God says about us. Trauma’s responsibility is to give us another identity as well as a mentality that is not led by Holy Spirit.

A sobering thought I’ve been pondering and meditating on here lately is that I choose to receive the grace given to me through Christ to isolate the trauma to the incident and the person(s) it involved. I choose not to drag my past into my present. I choose to see people in my life for who they really are and not view them through the lenses of pain. It’s not fair to the beautiful people who are in my life right now; nor is it fair to myself. How would you feel if you were mistreated for a wound you never caused? This is how we can do others if we allow the pain of the past to show up in our present and lead our decisions.
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This, by no means, is easy, but it’s doable because of Holy Spirit. We have been given the power to overcome and conquer all thoughts that are contrary to the knowledge of God. We don’t conquer bad thoughts with good ones; we conquer them with the Word of God. The more we do this, it sounds the alarm on the intruder called Trauma and serves it notice that it can no longer live comfortable in our space, our present moment, our relationships, or our decisions. It will not rule us nor steal our joy. Let’s take authority over the mentality of trauma today. 

Here’s a serious question to ask yourself. Not physical weight but emotional and mental weight. Being heavy is when there’s usually a drabby, negative, dark, overly critical nature. It’s when so much focus and emphasis are placed on what’s happening wrong rather than what’s right. This nature can bring about toxicity in relationships and can actually be a reason why we may walk alone without the companionship we desire.

Of course life throws curve balls. We face challenges, tests, trials, and tribulations. But to be heavy is to only discuss the bad, to only point out the flaws of others, to not take responsibility for our own actions, to play the victim, to think of God as a conspirator, and to constantly complain.

The Word tells us in Hebrews 12:1-2, “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,2 Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
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To lay aside weight is to put away or cast off. What weight are you carrying that God never called you to carry? What opinions are you giving about others concerning business that has nothing to do with you? Lay it all aside. It’s not worth being heavy. It’s not worth having baggage and trying to drag it into the lives of other people and get mad at them because they don’t want to deal with our heaviness. It’s not fair to them, nor is it their responsibility. Selah. 

Take a quick look at a calendar, any calendar, and you will see that the week starts on Sunday. Many times we tend to look at Sundays as an end to a week instead of a beginning of another week. It does matter how we start our week.

Here lately, I have been seeing a trend in getting comfortable with giving God leftovers. We go to a job for eight to twelve hours a day. We travel for our family and their extra-curricular activities. We give everything else time and attention. But when it comes to God, we have a hard time focusing our hearts and attention on Him. Although online church has become a way of protection as well as a convenient way to spread the Gospel, many will not even make time to see it at home when it is scheduled. They will get the Word “when they can,” and many times, that will not happen.
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Just something to think about…It does matter how you start your week. 

I just want to share a thought with you about how important and powerful your decisions are. The thing about a decision is that emotions and signs don’t often follow but that doesn’t make that decision any less powerful. For instance, if you decide to start working out three to four times a week, you probably won’t feel wind outside or see a rainbow as a sign that you should go forward with this decision. As a matter of fact, most of us, when we received Christ as Savior and Lord of our lives, didn’t see any sign. We just followed through with our decision. But just because we didn’t see any sign following our decision doesn’t mean our decision was any less powerful.
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God gave us the gift of choice. Because He is love (1 John 4:8) He gives us the opportunity to choose. And even more, He wants us to not only choose but to confident in the decision we are making even without a sign. Deciding to walk in deliverance and healing daily is not an easy feat. We must know it by faith. We walk by faith and not by sight (2 Corinthians 5:7). 

Another word for “herd” is “crowd.” Society has a way of trying to influence us to be like itself, to sound and dress like it, and to even think that success is defined by it. Honestly, success for the Christ follower, is seeing Jesus. It’s hearing Him say, “well done, good and faithful servant.”

The natural part of us likes to follow crowds because it feels better to us. We don’t like sticking out and causing a riff, so we go with the flow. But sometimes the flow leads to destruction. “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it” (Matthew 7:13-14 KJV).

This is a very sobering and strong Scripture. Let’s not live anesthetized and sedated by the culture of this world that we become loose in morals, values and beliefs that glorify Jesus Christ. Just because many are doing things that are against God’s Word doesn’t give us permission to do so. We are to be salt and light in the world.
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And no, this doesn’t give us permission to bash, belittle, or scare people into doing God’s will. Our life must be a witness. Let us live lives that are led by the Holy Spirit. 

The healthier we are, the healthier our ministry will be. People get a better us when we are whole. Our relationships thrive when we understand and walk in who we are called to be.

I just wanted to encourage you today to let you know that you are enough. If you removed your gifts and everything you believe makes you special, God already saw you as priceless. He deemed you worthy of His Son, Jesus Christ.

The challenge comes when we don’t feel like we measure up, when we don’t feel like we’re good enough. Many times we feel like we have to prove to people because we don’t think they take us seriously. But God will not supply us with what will not be needed by someone else. We have been given something that someone else needs. Let’s receive that by faith.
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We don’t have to prove; just be. Remember, we’re not human doings; we’re human beings.
“For in him we live, and move, and have our being.” Acts 17:28a