Last week I started attending this men’s small group called Iron men which is being held at Grace Fellowship Church right down the road from us. Jonathan Nelson from Young Life recommended it to me and I’m glad that he did. This morning at 6:30am was our second meeting and we just talked about our heart and how it’s constantly being shaped. And while we are told that we are made new in Christ it can be hard to believe because a life with God is so foreign and unknown to many of us. So as we try to focus on Christ, as we give our lives over to God we find ourselves fighting the temptation to drift back to what’s more familiar. But the problem with the familiar is that we fool ourselves to believe that it’s safe, when it isn’t. This new life with God is filled with hope and love, but we won’t feel that unless we take that step.
I know that one thing that prevents me from living in the new me is the lack of margin I have in the time I spend with God. I fool myself into thinking that I’m spending time with God because I work in a church and I attend Mass; however, if my heart isn’t really focused on getting to know God more, I’m really just going through the motions.
There is this article we read in our that talks about how sometimes our desires conflict with God’s desires for us. I believe that once we change our focus into really getting to know God, and figuring out how to focus on God in the things that we do, we will be able to change the way that we live and think, because the risk and fears of following God will diminish.