This is my first arrangement for Thrive Global and my goodness am I excited. Being able to share my heart from a place of THRIVING rather than a place of SURVIVING is exhilarating. It is a position of TRUE VITALITY. Growing up as a child, my mom did everything she could to provide the best life possible for my siblings and I on her financial level and sometimes beyond that place of financial peace. It was generational. We were not going to miss out on life experience, even if that meant the utilities weren’t always taken care of on time.
It taught us wonderful survival tactics. It taught us how to push through difficult times, not realizing that many of those tough times were arising because of our own choices. Our part of town was deeply religious. I was born in church. It was all I knew. It wasn’t until my adult life that I realized I had been non-verbally and sometimes verbally taught to make my choices, the best I could, and the results were either blamed on God if they were positive or the devil if they were negative. I started preaching when I was seven. I could remember days of getting in trouble at school and the teacher calling home. I would tell my mom, “the devil made me do a certain thing.” I would get the whooping though. It baffled me as a child but growing up it was funny.
I was only doing what had been modeled. Make my decisions, and make sure I was doing my best, and whatever the results good or bad, there was someone to blame it on. It wasn’t until later in my life that I realized I was playing the victim to my own choices. It didn’t hit me until I was no longer enjoying the relationship God and I shared. I was making some of the best choices I thought I could make, but my electricity was off. God wasn’t sitting in a dark house, my family and I were. I was making some of the best decisions I thought I could make in marriage and there were many times I was miserable and I’m sure she was as well. I was going to church, had been responsible for planting (starting) new churches in other countries and abroad, again, ministry was my life. I just wasn’t enjoying the relationship God and I shared. Who could I blame that on?
Then I read in Deuteronomy 30:9 “for the Lord will again rejoice over thee for good” and it LEAPED within me. In the MESSAGE version of the scripture it says, “Yes, God will start enjoying you again.” Right, I swallowed real deep just like you just did. When it dawned on me that just like I wasn’t enjoying our relationship, my religious thinking was keeping God from enjoying it too. This made me return to the scriptures and read them for myself outside of what I had been taught. I then realized, while many had well intentions, there were some grave misunderstandings and yes, even some deception. To know that God wanted to enjoy our relationship together was a shock to me. Imagine that from this very moment you experience only joy, happiness, unconditional love, in fact. Do you see what that does to your perception of God? This is mentally liberating! Our relationship with God goes beyond rules and regulations.
It shifted my consciousness and my relationship with God. It opened me up to God’s best for my life. I realized that all the actions a person chooses to take in their life, or actions that they choose not to take, produce the results that make up the life they are experiencing. These actions, or inactions, are motivated by our thoughts. This was powerful. It released my mind from the religious cage it was stuck in. I no longer had to survive, I could very well indeed THRIVE. Numerous situations in our life have taught us to be the way that we are today. The goal however, is to let go or release those emotions to liberate your mind and experience true freedom!
Thanks for reading!
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