bring on the guava!

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. Ephesians 1:3-6

I grew up thinking Christianity was all about what we “didn't do.” Living just to abstain from evil wasn't fun or fulfilling. The enemy deceived me into thinking that at least I could feel alive if I did what I wasn't supposed to do.

My family lived across the street from the high school when I was a child. My sister and I were such a handful that when we wanted to play school, we broke into the high school to do it. The simple fact that it was locked made us want to break in.

Think about this with me: Only one tree in the entire Garden was forbidden to Adam and Eve. Instead of surveying everything God had given and marveling, Eve was seduced by the serpent into thinking, Perhaps I'd rather trade all this in for the one thing God told me to avoid. He could be holding out on me.

We've paid dearly for believing this lie. In comparison to all that we've been given to enjoy in our earthly life with Jesus, what we've been called to avoid is like one measly tree in the whole garden. We don't even begin to eat the fruit of the endless groves in our garden. Ephesians 1:3 says we have every spiritual blessing in Jesus!

We reach for the forbidden trees because we're bored with a steady diet of nothing but apples and bananas. Some of us are doing the same things to fuel our Christian faith that we did years ago, and we're in a rut. It's time to wake up and smell the guava!

When you and I start taking Jesus up on all he made possible for us, we will be so much happier in our faith that abstaining from evil will not seem nearly so sacrificial.

When we learn to really enjoy our God, the craving for the world's pleasures is diminished. The need has already been met just as it was meant to be. Nothing will make you more consistently happy than a full-bore, flood-stage relationship with Jesus Christ. —Beth Moore bethmoore.org

seeking: Jesus, how have I experienced your many blessings this day? What praise will I offer to you now?

responding: Am I bored in my faith because I have not taken all Jesus has offered me? • How can I break out of my rut and enjoy my faith?

Lord, please help me broaden my spiritual horizons and accept every spiritual blessing in Jesus. Please take away my appetite for sin and replace it with a hunger and thirst for you!

following: Take Jesus up on all he has made possible for you.

our journey