Today I want to give you a place to start your week. It’s Monday and in the wake of a great weekend and a workweek ahead, sometimes you just need a “kickstart” to get focused. So grab some coffee let’s start a great week together.
Yesterday we continued our series on Elijah entitled, “Whirlwind.” In week 4, we looked at the next part of Elijah’s story as we see God “stretching” those identified in its narrative.
1 Kings 18 spells out how God began to stretch lives.
- Obadiah is stretched out of his comfort zone.
- Elijah is stretched in his obedience to a new direction.
- Ahab stretched out of his beliefs.
- The people of Israel are stretched in their view of God.
How do we approach being in position of change?
- Bring your life into alignment; Grant God access.
- The only way to function in a healthy way to make sure our life in an alignment with God. Not only is this challenging but it’s a daily decision. And the way to do it is to invite God to work in your life. We can’t bring our lives into alignment on our own. We need God’s help. Be specific today. Is there an area that is “off”? Locate that and grant God access.
- Embrace the tensions of life.
- Spend some time in Word, in prayer, and in worship. As you sends “tensions,” don’t run from them. Those areas become the place where God may want to grow you. It may be the place where His “power works best in weakness.” It’s in the tension of your faith that God builds the strength of your faith.
- Trust the process God has you in.
- Having to stretch an area that hasn’t normally been stretched OR is needing to be stretched doesn’t always show the immediate results we Americans like to see. But if we’ll trust the process, God can root and build our lives in deeper ways than we’ll ever realize.
As a personal trainer friend of mine says, “Stretching can help improve flexibility, and, consequently, range of motion about your joints. It can enable your muscles to work most effectively.” Imagine if we thought of that spiritually? The more we align ourselves with Christ and embrace in His strength the tensions of life, the more our lives and our love can have a greater range of motion and effectiveness to the world around us.
Today, face the tension by allowing yourself to be stretched!! Love you all. Excited to see what God does in and through you.
See you this Sunday!!
BTW: This is the song on repeat this morning in my iTunes.
pdave.me 
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