Living Freely and LightlySample

Accepting Jesus’s Invitation to Recover Your Life

Sometimes God gets our attention with a loud crash of circumstances, shaking us awake to the need for a new way of living. But I wonder if more often it’s a gentle, subtle, slow waking up. Insecurities popping up here, questions coming to the surface there, small things that point to bigger things that tell us perhaps what we’ve been saying is fine is not actually fine at all.

Jesus offers a vision for the good, abundant life, but if you’re like me, you’ve been settling for a counterfeit for a very long time. The thing is, it’s easy to fall back to sleep. To be lulled into thinking the dissatisfaction inside you is made up, the questions about your true identity are unimportant and too big, the unbecoming behavior just needs to be modified with discipline and determination.

But instead, what if these are signposts pointing you in the right direction—toward health, healing, and wholeness? If that’s the case, then let’s wake up and take notice of those important signs!

Your life can be made new again, restored to its original purpose, full of peace and hope. The first step to making a change of any kind is to become aware of the need for change, so this is where we’ll begin. With the help of the Holy Spirit, use this section to engage in the spiritual work of honest exploration, listening, reflecting, truth telling, and peering under the surface of your behavior to discover any places where you’re tangled up and kept from the abundant life Jesus is offering.

As you recognize where you may have veered off course, please be gentle with yourself and remember that God is so full of grace. This journey is about learning, remembering, and clinging to the truth that will set you free. Will it be a little uncomfortable? For sure. But it is absolutely worth it.

This is an invitation to recover your life.

Jesus, you wrap your arms around me. You are less concerned about my bad behavior than you are about my precious heart. I am so grateful. I linger here because I need to know I am loved. I need to know I’m not forgotten. I need to know who I am. Please recover my life. Amen.