The fullness of life God has aligned for you cannot be received when you’re holding on to something else. If you’re clinging to your plans, God’s plans have no open hand to land in. If you’re focused on your idea of happiness, you miss the opportunities for true, deep, lasting happiness God has designed for you.



So what do you want, Sis? Do you want your life your way, or do you want the life God has available for you that promises to be beyond anything you could imagine. Those are God’s words, not mine. Isaiah 55: 8-9, “My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.”



I don’t know about you, but I’ve decided I DESPERATELY WANT higher thoughts and higher ways so I can live a life that is far beyond anything I could imagine. I don’t kinda want it. I don’t sorta want it. I’m not one foot in and one foot out with wanting it. No, I desperately want the life God has for me.



Now it’s time for you to decide. Do you want your plans? Do you want your idea of happiness? Do you want your way? Do you want your timing? Or, are you trusting God is above all, sees all, knows all, and holds all, and therefore his way is always better than your way, his plans are immeasurably better than your plans, and his timing is infinitely better than your timing.



That’s where I am on this journey of life. I’m absolutely certain at this point if God is in it, I want it. I want everything single thing he has for me. I want to do everything he has created me to do. I want to be available for my assignment. I want to be in position for partnership in purpose with Jesus. I want it, I want it all, and I want it bad. However, I’m even more certain if God is not in it, I don’t want it. I mean I don’t even want to touch it. I don’t want to entertain it in my thoughts. I don’t want to be talking about it. I don’t want to dance with it. If God’s not in it, I don’t want to even be in the same room with it.



Looking back, I realize how many tables I’ve desperately wanted to be at that were never meant for me. How many times I wanted to sit with the wrong people, have the wrong conversations, and make the wrong plans. I prayed for a seat at the wrong tables. Whew, thank you Lord for denying my foolish requests! In my bible there’s a round pink sticky note on Matthew 21 where Jesus goes into his temple and knocks over the tables, and that note says, “Father, forgive me for the times I craved a place at a table you would have flipped.”



So, how do we stay on the path God has for us? How do we sit at the appointed tables with the right people aligned by God? How do we make sense in the nonsense and see the right way when there are so many ways to choose from? How do we refuse the temptation to settle for what’s easy and what’s right now, and fight for the fullness of life we were created for? How do we ever get ourselves good enough to be used for divine purposes?



Here it is … Jesus says in Luke 9: 23-24, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross daily, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.”



Understand, Jesus isn’t talking about you DYING, he’s talking about YOU dying. The you that is naturally selfish, self-centered, self-focused, self-serving. You always think of you first. Of course you do,