God Made You For More

During this Christmas season I feel that I have learned a ton whether that be how busy working for a church can get during Christmas time or learning things that God is teaching me in my own personal life. With busyness comes distraction. Distraction from things that bring us pain or things that cause us to worry. It can also distract us from the good things as well like forgetting to appreciate the small things because we are moving at a million miles an hour.

While I think some small doses of distraction can be good from time to time, I believe that when we have too much of it, it can lead us to miss out on what God has planned. Now obviously some seasons are busier than others, but I think the times when we are the busiest are the times that we need to make more time for God. The times that we are the busiest are the times that we need to stay rooted in Him in order for us to learn all that He is teaching us in the busy season.

For me specifically, God has been working in a lot of different areas through questions I think we all ask ourselves at some point in our life like "am I enough?", "am I lovable?", "what is my worth?", and so many more. I believe these questions creep in and begin to feed our insecurities and imperfections by saying we aren't enough, we aren't lovable, we aren't worth much, etc. See while the world says that we aren't any of these things, God thinks otherwise. Sin is what causes us to believe these lies because from sin, we are imperfect.

That's why we need Christ to bridge that gap between us and our perfect heavenly Father. He's been teaching me a lot through these questions of insecurity, doubt, and imperfection. A lot of it has been leaning into things like calling, purpose, and what I am made for. When these things begin to fill your mind, you have two choices. One is to face it on your own, and one is to take it to God. One of these leads to unanswered questions, the other leads to answered questions that takes time and healing to truly believe and walk in. Bringing things to God doesn't always mean that the pain will go away immediately, things will be given to you right away, or He will answer something in your timing.

Taking things to God takes faith and trusting in Him and leaning not on your own understanding is just part of walking in step with Him. See all the things that we look for and try to fill from the world and others are the things that the Lord can fill if we just let Him. When we are able to understand that He has made us for more in this life and in the next, it allows us to see things differently and from a new perspective. Being grounded in Him and what He says allows us to be freed up from the things we might not understand or agree with, because we know what is absolute.

See for me, the last couple months has been a long stretch of growth through just a tough season. Feeling like your world is falling apart while it keeps spinning for everyone else is a humbling experience but one that allows you to grow so much if you lean into what God has for you. I had become stagnate in my faith and honestly was going through the motions. It wasn't until God really shook me up to make me realize how much more I needed to rely on Him. I had been trying to do things on my own account that I didn't even realize at the time, causing me to fall short and run dry because of all my imperfections and flaws.

Looking back over these past few months, while there has been a lot of heartache and growing pains, man has it been cool to see how much God has helped me grow and rely on Him more. Am I perfect, heck no. Very far from it actually. But I think that is what is cool. Even though I have grown a ton, I still have so much more growth to look forward to. While it was hard working through that growth and not being able to see the outcome, I am able to look back and be full of gratitude for all God did through it. It reminds me of this analogy that my friend Alex Wulfhorst gave me involving the mountains and the valleys. We strive to get to the mountain top for maybe the view, the experience, whatever it might be.

We tend to forget about the valley that is below or in between the mountains. The higher you get up on the mountain, the less vegetation and growth there is. In the valleys, however, is where the most growth and vegetation lie. Although it is harder to see where you are headed while in the valley, there is a ton of growth that by the time you get to the mountaintop, you get to finally see all the growth that you went through to get there. And I think that a lot of people miss that. They go through growing pains, get to the mountaintop, and forget to admire how they got there. While the hike up the mountain might have sucked, you appreciate it more because you know what it took to get there.

I had been praying and thinking on an actual name for this blog since I didn't really like it just being my name necessarily and I felt like the title "Made For More" was something that is simple yet so profound. See I think for a lot of us, we can go throughout our day and the busyness of life and almost go through the motions. We wake up, go to work, come home, repeat. Now obviously, there are things that are in between that very vague day, but for the most part, we get into a routine and follow that exact routine over and over again. Now I don't think there is anything wrong with having routines and habits. It's when we get caught in the cycle where we are just going through the rhythms.

Something that God has convicted me of recently is the idea that every day I wake up, He has placed me on this earth for a purpose. Each day I am breathing, God has placed me on this earth for a reason. That being said, who am I to go throughout my day and let that go to waste. What am I doing TODAY that pushes the Kingdom forward? Who am I talked to about Jesus today that could ultimately change their eternity? I think that through busyness, cycles, and going through the motions, we lose sight of the bigger picture. We can forget that we are made for more.

There's a quote that I remember reading from Corrie ten Boom and she said this "If the devil cannot make us bad, he will make us busy". I think there's a lot of truth to this statement because of how easy it is to fill our day with so many things and forget to make Jesus one of them. The busier we are the less time we have for Him, right? We so casually say, "I'll read my Bible later" or "I'll just have a longer quiet time tomorrow". What if the opposite was true for us? What if the busier we were the more we said, "I need to read my Bible before anything else today" or "I need to have a longer quiet time today". We get so caught up in busyness that we compromise the things that are convenient to us.

Living in the States, we are blessed more than I think we will ever truly know. We tend to take reading Scripture and sharing our faith publicly for granted. That is why we must be careful to appreciate the time that we have and get to make for God. The more we love something, the more we are willing to make time for it. Another way of saying it is where your heart is, there your time will be also.

If you're somewhat following along with all that I am saying, first of all, hats off to you. When I talk about these topics, I can tend to speak my mind in more of a raw format, meaning I can get caught in rabbit trails if I am not too careful. But I can assure you it is all things I am passionate about and I pray that you at least get something out of this whole thing. That being said, I wanted to focus back in on what God has been teaching me during a busy season. I mentioned the desire of changing the blog name to "Made For More" and I had always had the thought that God creates us for more than what the earth teaches us.

See the world tries to teach us all these different ideas growing up, ultimately saying that we can be whoever we want to be. While I do think there is some truth to that, I also think that God has created each of us uniquely for a specific purpose. God made you for more than just living on the earth, living a good life, and then your just done when you die. God made you on purpose for a purpose and He made you for more than what the world could ever offer. The God of the universe put you on this Earth for a specific reason. A saying that I saw a few years back that always stuck with me was this "How cool is it that the God who created mountains, oceans, and galaxies looked at you and thought the world needed one of you too."

See you were made for more. God made you with a specific plan and a specific purpose in mind. Each day that we are on this Earth, we are fulfilling the purpose He has for us. When you think about it like that, how cool is it that He uniquely designed you for something He had planned. That's why I think it is so important to remind ourselves daily that He has made us for more. More than the constant cycles and rhythms of life. Another day is another opportunity to praise His name and grow the Kingdom of believers.