Your a Champion

"Some people have called me Champion. Why, then do I sometimes feel like a Chump? Could it be the culture around me that puts me down rather than calls me up? Perhaps it's the mocking voices of past failures. It's been said that we tend to believe the opinions of the most significant person in our life. That's why I have to make Jesus Christ my Hero and Mentor. He speaks to me about the culture, reminding me that I am in the world but not of it, and I am a citizen of heaven. Regarding my failures, He says 'Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.' To my feelings of inadequacy He declares, 'You can do all things through Me.' When I allow His voice to be the predominant one in my life, the Champion within bursts forth and propels me to victory. Regardless of how you're feeling this morning, I know, He knows, you ARE a Champion!"

RESCUE Is God’s Plan

On the day Adam and Eve fell from grace, they ran off and hid in the bushes. And God came looking for them. He called to Adam, “Where are you?” (Gen. 3:9). Thus began the long and painful story of God’s pursuit of mankind. Though we betrayed him and fell into the hands of the Evil One, God did not abandon us. Even a quick read of the Old Testament would be enough to convince you that rescue is God’s plan. First with Noah, then with Abraham, and then with the nation Israel, you see God looking for a people who will turn to him from the heart, be his intimate allies once more.

The dramatic archetype is the Exodus, where God goes to war against the Egyptian taskmasters to set his captive people free.

Four hundred years they have languished in a life of despair. Suddenly—blood. Hail. Locusts. Darkness. Death. Plague after plague descends on Egypt like the blows of some unrelenting ax. Pharaoh releases his grip, but only for a moment. The fleeing slaves are pinned against the Red Sea when Egypt makes a last charge, hurtling down on them in chariots. God drowns those soldiers in the sea, every last one of them. Standing in shock and joy on the opposite shore, the Hebrews proclaim, “The LORD is a warrior” (Ex. 15:3). God is a warrior. He has come to rescue us.

(Epic, 61-62) John Eldredge

So What?
What do you need rescued from? Write a list of the things you are struggling with and give them to God! He wants to Rescue us! But we have to let him.

Chasing after Him

We all share the same dilemma—we long for life and we’re not sure where to find it. We wonder if we ever do find it, can we make it last? The longing for life within us seems incongruent with the life we find around us. What is available seems at times close to what we want, but never quite a fit. Our days come to us as a riddle, and the answers aren’t handed out with our birth certificates. We must journey to find the life we prize. And the guide we have been given is the desire set deep within us.

The greatest human tragedy is simply to give up the search. There is nothing of greater importance than the life of our deep heart. To lose heart is to lose everything. And if we are to bring our hearts along in our life’s journey, we simply must not, we cannot, abandon this desire. Gerald May writes in The Awakened Heart,

There is a desire within each of us, in the deep center of ourselves that we call our heart. We were born with it, it is never completely satisfied, and it never dies. We are often unaware of it, but it is always awake . . . Our true identity, our reason for being, is to be found in this desire.

SO WHAT?

What do you desire your relationship with God to look like? That is a desire that you can not let go of. You must chase it with your whole heart. Today chase after God with your whole entire heart and don't ever stop chasing after Him.