Elevate Your Day with Andi and Brian Hale

Seek God

From THRIVE with God on YouVersion
As we begin on our journey of thriving with God, take a twirl with me down memory lane. Imagine you are outside on a playground. Yes, a playground! Imagine you’re standing on pine needles as a soft breeze blows gently across your face. The air is filled with a symphony of laughter, screams, and the “clink, clink” of beads in little girls’ hair. You can smell the freshly cut grass that has so effortlessly made its light green stains on your jeans. You can taste your own salty sweat, slowly dripping from your forehead over your lips.
You cover your eyes with your hands and laugh as you begin to count to 10. Your heart beats faster, your ears perk up, and you can barely contain your eagerness to uncover your eyes and start running. You finally finish counting, shout “Ready or not, here I come!” and excitedly seek all who are hiding.
Whew, what a time! Hide-and-seek as a child was filled with lots of excitement, awareness, passion, and joy. When the Word says to seek God with all our hearts, that is the kind of seeking we want to do.
We want to seek Him with zeal, with longing, and with all of our attention. Can you guess what the best part about seeking God is?
He isn’t even hiding from us!
Jeremiah 29:12-13 Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. [13] You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.
We don’t have to jump through hoops, sweat, bleed, trip, or run like crazy to find Him. He is always there – He is just waiting for us to turn our hearts and minds towards Him.
Let’s go back to our playground example. Imagine that after counting to 10 you opened your eyes and the person you were seeking was directly in front of you! All you had to do was take one step.
Matthew 5:6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
My friend, that one step is all God is asking for. Whether it be praying, opening our Word, watching a sermon, attending an event, or cracking open a devotional like this one – trust that when we take that step He is right there, waiting for us with open arms.
Psalms 63:1 You, God, are my God, earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you, in a dry and parched land where there is no water.
Pray it Out: Father God, I’m so grateful You do not hide from me and that as I draw near to You, You draw near to me. I admit there were times my flesh got the best of me and I strayed away from You. I confess there were times I engaged with You out of routine instead of out of love.
Today, I ask that You will create in me a clean heart oh God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Reveal to me anything that is keeping me from being diligent in my time with You, and Holy Spirit help me to navigate in the wisest way possible. In Jesus’ Name, Amen
Write it Out: What would it look like for you to seek God with all of your heart? Get specific and personal!

Thrive With God

From THRIVE with God on YouVersion
Have you ever tried to utilize an item while missing the key elements needed to do so? Imagine grabbing a pen with no ink, opening a milk carton to find it empty, or attempting to turn on a lamp and realizing the bulb was gone. In each of these situations, the missing components make it almost impossible to interact with the tool as desired.
In a similar way, our relationship with God can be void of elements that deeply impact how we interact with Him. These missing elements may make us feel like our relationship with Him is stagnant, superficial, or even non-existent. We may crave more intimacy with Him, but struggle to identify what exactly it is that is missing.
As we embark on our journey of thriving in our relationship with God, we will explore what I believe to be four fundamental components to do so: Seeking, Abiding, Submitting, and Trusting.
Remember the following:
As we seek God, He draws near to us (James 4:8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.)
As we abide in Him, we shall find rest (Matthew 11:28 Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.)
We can submit to God because He knows all (Isaiah 55:8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord.)
We can trust in Him to work things out for our good (Romans 8:28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.)
Let’s thrive with God!
Pray it Out: Lord, prepare my heart and my mind to receive all that You will do over these next few days. I’m choosing to seek Your face and dwell in Your presence, and I know that I will encounter You. I love You! In Jesus’ Name, Amen
 

Rescue Not Religion

Rescue, Not Religion
Why did Jesus come to the world? Was it to create a religion? Or something else?
The answer lies in Luke 4. Jesus returned to his hometown of Nazareth, and when he went to the synagogue service, he was given the scroll of Isaiah to read aloud to the congregation. He read:
The Spirit of the Lord is on me,because he has anointed meto proclaim good news to the poor.He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisonersand recovery of sight for the blind,to set the oppressed free,to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. (Luke 4:17-19) 
Luke seems to have given a summary of everything that Isaiah said in the first three verses of chapter 61. Isaiah also included healing of broken hearts; comfort for those who mourn and grieve; and turning ashes into beauty, mourning into joy, and despair into praise. These are not categories of people in need of forgiveness but places of need in every one of our lives and stories.
What came after the reading was the most dramatic moment of all. Jesus gave the scroll back to the attendant. When everyone’s eyes were fixed on him, he started his sermon: “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (verse 21).
It’s the ultimate “mic-drop moment,” isn’t it? Jesus said, “Make no mistake about it. This is talking about me. This is what I came to do.” Yeah, it starts with forgiveness, but it is so much bigger than that.
Jesus did not come to create a religion. He came to heal, redeem, restore, repair our brokenness, set our captive hearts free, and lead us to the life to the fullest that he came to bring us. So, ask yourself, “Is that the Jesus that I have experienced in my life?”
Remember, there is a difference between living forgiven and living free. Are you living free? Most Christians I know are not.
Something has to change.
Living free. Spend some time picturing what that could mean for you.

Where Do I Go for Help?

Where Do I Go for Help?
We sometimes face issues around our health, marriage, finances, relationships, work, and life in general that cause us to feel heavy. They often leave us broken, hurting, wounded, messed up, confused, doubting, hopeless, and uncertain. Where do we go with our stuff?
Church? Really, how helpful has that been? Have you, like me, ever felt like your life, story, and/or current circumstances were just a little too messy for the church? It is not uncommon.
There’s a story in Mark that sheds some light on the question of where we should go with our messes.
A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”
Jesus was indignant. He reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed. (Mark 1:40-42)
The Bible says Jesus was indignant. But Jesus was not angry with this man. He wasn’t saying, “Don’t get that stuff near me.” Jesus got angry when people were isolated, hopeless, left out, or led to believe that they were beyond his grace, mercy, forgiveness, and healing.
Back then, if you had leprosy, you were supposed to live away from the healthy and to cry out, “Unclean!” But there was nothing in the leper’s life Jesus was unwilling to touch. There was nothing he had done or that had been done to him that made Jesus uncomfortable with him.
Unfortunately, that is often the difference between Jesus and the church. All too often the church ignores or backs away from those with deep needs or obvious flaws.
Please hear me. I think that the church can be great. When it lines up with what Jesus intended for it to be, it can be the hope of the world. But church is not the destination. It was never intended to be.
Ultimately, all of us need what this man needed: to get to Jesus.
In your prayer time today, bring to Jesus the burdens that you have been carrying on your own.

The Enemy's Foothold

The Enemy's Footholds in Your Life
In our attempts to move toward the future that God wants for us, we have to recognize how our enemy, the devil, is holding us back. In Genesis 3:1-7, he is a deceptive yet convincing snake sowing doubt about God’s goodness. In 1 Peter 5:8, he is a roaring lion seeking to devour us. In John 10:10, he is a thief seeking to kill and destroy us.
God wants us to understand who we are up against and how every single day of our lives this enemy comes after our hearts. It is what Paul described in Ephesians 4:26-27: “‘In your anger do not sin’: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.”
The Greek word for foothold is topos. It means a base for further advance, a place to come back to and operate from later.
In creating footholds, the enemy takes the things we’ve done and uses them against us. But he even more covertly, secretly, insidiously, and subtly uses the things that have been done to us, said to us, and said about us to establish footholds in our lives too.
So, what messages have you received? Perhaps one or more of these? You will never really matter, never be good enough, smart enough, strong enough, beautiful enough, handsome enough, successful, worth the time of day, desired or pursued, amount to anything.
Where has the enemy established footholds in your life? Your ability to experience the freedom that is available to you depends on your ability to answer that question.
Identify harmful messages you’ve told yourself as well as harmful messages from others that you’ve internalized. Ask God to rewrite those areas of your life with his truth.