"Benaiah chased a lion down into a pit. Despite the snow and slippery ground, he caught the lion and killed it." -2 Samuel 23:20-21
Have you ever had one of those moments where you do something crazy and afterwards ask yourself, "What was I thinking?" --------------------------------------------------------------------------- God is in the business of strategically positioning us in the right place at the right time. But oftentimes, the right place feels like the wrong place, and the right time often seems like the wrong time. Look ahead 2 verses and see what happens next. 2 Samuel 23:23 says, "And David put Benaiah in charge of his Bodyguards." For most people, finding yourself in a pit with a lion on a snowy day would qualify as bad luck, but God turned what we may consider a challenging experience into Benaiah’s big break! He landed a job with the King of Israel! USE YOUR PAST FOR A PURPOSE. God is in the resume-building business. He is always using past experiences to prepare us for future opportunities. Being able to put on your resume that you killed a lion in a pit on a snowy day is pretty impressive--especially if you're applying for a position as a bodyguard! Oftentimes, these God-given opportunities come disguised as man-eating lions. How we react to these lions that we encounter, however, will determine our destiny. The greatest risks are usually your greatest opportunities! Some of your life-altering decisions/changes will cause sleepless nights. These steps of faith are usually accompanied by acute fear and nausea. But these are the moments when God sets the stage, and you come alive! --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Churches have fixated on sins of commission for far too long. We have a long list of “don’ts”. We tend to think of holiness as the byproduct of subtracting something from our lives that shouldn’t be there. While holiness certainly involves subtraction, God equally counts our sins of omission—those things that we could have and should have done, but we chose not to. You can do nothing wrong and still do nothing right. Our calling is much higher than simply running away from what’s wrong; we are called to chase lions! There is an old saying: “No guts, no glory.” When we don’t have the guts to step out in faith and chase lions, then God is robbed of the glory that rightfully belongs to Him. Lion-chasers are proactive; they are always on the lookout for God-ordained opportunities. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Success = doing the best that you can with what you have where you are Success is making the most of every opportunity. Spiritual maturity is seeing and seizing God-ordained opportunities. Think of every opportunity as God’s gift to you. What you do with these opportunities is your gift to God. Our greatest regrets in life will be missed opportunities.
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