Garry E Ellis

Don’t be afraid of the day you fall down. Do however fear the day you choose to never get back up.

God is really good. I think it’s easy to obsess over all of the deep reasons why God doesn’t want the things we hoped for deep down to work out because it’s easier than getting our hopes up again and again. We start to describe God as hyper sovereign as a way of coping with the underlying belief that God doesn’t concern Himself with your desires or heartbreaks or hopes. That is simply not true. Jesus wept at the death of the friend He was going to choose to raise from the dead.

A quick way to tell if your optics of Gods heart are compromised by personal fear or despair or insecurity is to ask yourself “what part of human relationship am I neglecting in my detailed description of God in this dynamic?” God invented the attributes we display: longing, fear, hope, courage, joy, happiness, sorrow, anger, free will, control, compassion, justice, integrity. All of these qualities God has invented and at some point experienced Himself.

If you can experience it, God designed the capacity within you with intention. That doesn’t mean He wants you to do everything just because you can, but contextually it was still an intentional design.

If a quality is missing from that equation, ask yourself what you’re afraid of missing out on with God if you allowed yourself to add that to the equation. And then let God walk you through that.

I hear the Lord saying He’s actively healing people with auto-immune diseases. He’s restoring children to couples who at some point had a miscarriage. And He is creating opportunities for Christians to own land even if they’re not business owners. This year is the year of possession says the Lord for the sake of the nations to know the Lord of Israel!

“You are not obligated to conform to a version of yourself solely to make others feel comfortable. Your authenticity and true self should always be respected and embraced, even if it challenges the expectations or comfort of those around you. It's important to prioritize your own emotional health and authenticity while finding a balance between your needs and the needs of others in your relationships and interactions.”

-Jason Vallotton

When running a company, if you over extend your qualifying prerequisites for a position that you simultaneously under value, you’ll create a large and growing gap between potential, excellent employees and employers with genuinely relevant products and services. In other words, you create a culture where there’s more of a chance for great and mutually benefiting relationships to never exist than you will for connection and mutual-thriving relationships. A prime example is when a company requires a 4 year degree in exchange for a position that pays minimum wage or waits to offer benefits or only offers the maximum hours per week to cut costs by not legally having to offer benefits at all. It saves money in the short run but damages the company in the long run because it taints reputation, it devalues relationship, it disqualifies more people from experiencing the heart of the company and its products and services, and it’s focus for growth is predominantly motivated by saving and conserving instead of expanding and discovering. Fundamentally, it’s the act of burying your coins in the sand instead of multiplying them. One is fear based and the other is not.

The same principal often can be experienced in relationships. We tend to over extend our list of expectations for what we believe “health and wholeness” to look like and we inadvertently undermine the value of the role our friends play in our lives out of fear of appearing unhealthy or not wanting to get hurt. We are more inclined to bury our heart instead of give it away. When we do this it plays it safe upfront but in the long run, it keeps us from discovering places and people that God was excited to journey with us to.

I’m not saying the answer is to over value the role of relationship and under qualify it, but often when we have a fear in one direction, we tend to overcompensate for it by swinging the pendulum far in the other direction.

Ultimately both extremes are not beneficial to anyone including ourselves. It may feel safe but it isn’t a Kingdom way of thinking. It is an Imperial way of thinking. Jesus talked about the Kingdom of God not the Imperial forces of Heaven.

If the Holy Spirit were removed from the early church, 90% of what happened would stop. If the Holy Spirit were removed from today's church, 90% of what happens would continue.

-AW Tozer

I’d rather be known for getting up 8 times than being known for falling down 7 times.

When you have no other options, you tend to see greater results

Every deficiency we possess has the capacity to be met with a part of the heart of God. As triune beings with a body, soul, and spirit-it is the yearning of God to restore all of our incompleteness in all three places. That’s what He shed His blood for. Salvation includes in its Greek usage of the word a perfection or a wholeness. We get to discover that already finished work over the course of our lives and we call that discovery process sanctification.

But it is never the desire or heart of God to leave a need unmet or unaddressed. For a broken heart, an unbalanced checkbook, an abandoned child, a book not yet written, a brochure of bandaged wounds and debris of a life scattered across years of neglect and sorrow-the Father has a redemptive solution to extract cartilage around those wounds that’s gone bad with decay and insert a perfect story of healing and wholeness where even when you try to reflect on the memories of pain, you can’t remember the pain because even your brain is brand new.

Here’s where it gets fun: relationships are synergistic. He does the clearing out, we get to partner with the replacement process. If we don’t choose into His solutions and His perfect desires for how to mend those wounds, we often times by default choose into prolonging the healing process. That in itself adds more trauma to the wound.

Be encouraged and know that God has a redemptive plan for those dark places where nobody else has been allowed by you to go. Yes, God will use the secret drinking problem you’ve been partnering with because you drink a bottle of wine after work to relieve the anxiety and fear. Yes, God will use the deep resentment in your heart to advance His kingdom and attempt to offer redemption at the same time. It doesn’t always make sense…it very rarely does upfront. But if you’re willing to lean in, God will show you a story of redemption with your name on it.

Whatever you believe, the answer is yes

Not to be taken out of context. If you believe you’re unworthy, you’ll love and behave and think in a manner of someone who is unworthy. If you believe you’re a waste of everyone’s time, you’ll do life with people in a way that wastes their time. If you believe you’re worth the redemptive price Jesus paid for on the cross, you’ll take responsibility of renewing your mind in the Word each day, you’ll seek after things that benefit your identity in Christ and bridge the gap between where you are and where you desire to be.

Whatever you choose to come into covenant with (believe), the answer is yes.

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