What You Love to Do? Do That! Get away with me and you’ll recover your life . . . Learn the unforced rhythms of grace—Matthew 11:28-29 We’re all built by the same creator. And we’re built by him to “come home,” every so often. This coming home is integral to the lives we’re meant to live. God’s built us to need, and to receive, his loving care. He’s built us to be restored, by him. (Psalm 23:1-6; Matthew 11:28). The thing is, many of us men don’t know how to come home. We’re each designed to do it uniquely, so it takes some discovery. Few of us do that. If we do discover how, though, and if we begin to come home regularly, we live in a condition of abundance. We get filled up—and are able to overflow onto others, onto spouses, children, friends, people in need. We are able to give, for we’ve first received. We’re able to love and serve as we were meant to. We’re able to be who we were created to be and to do the work we were created to do. If we neglect the task of discovery, if we fail to learn how to come home, we operate instead in a condition of depletion. We tend to try to pull what we (think we) need from other people. We tend to try to take from them, rather than overflow onto them. Okay, so what do we do? Make a list of ten to twenty things—things you truly love doing. Avoid obligations or things you “love” because other people might think you’re cool for doing them. List things that move your heart, calm your heart, or make it beat fast. List things that restore you, excite you, connect you to God, things that allow you to truly worship him in the doing. Once you have your list, commit to inserting your things generously into your daily, weekly, monthly calendar.
Christ arrives right on time to make this happen. He didn’t, and doesn’t, wait for us to get ready. He presented himself for this sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything to get ourselves ready. And even if we hadn’t been so weak, we wouldn’t have known what to do anyway. We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put his love on the line for us by offering his Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to him. Romans 5:8 MSG
The servant grew up before God—a scrawny seedling, a scrubby plant in a parched field. There was nothing attractive about him, nothing to cause us to take a second look. He was looked down on and passed over, a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand. One look at him and people turned away. We looked down on him, thought he was scum. But the fact is, it was our pains he carried— our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us. We thought he brought it on himself, that God was punishing him for his own failures. But it was our sins that did that to him, that ripped and tore and crushed him— our sins! He took the punishment, and that made us whole. Through his bruises we get healed. We’re all like sheep who’ve wandered off and gotten lost. We’ve all done our own thing, gone our own way. And GOD has piled all our sins, everything we’ve done wrong, on him, on him. Isaiah 53:5 MSG
Date published: 23-03-2016 Prayer and faith in God helped Hollywood star Jesse Metcalfe get and stay sober, he has revealed. The star of God’s Not Dead 2, who is known worldwide for his roles in John Tucker Must Die, Desperate Housewives and Dallas, told Fox411 that faith had become really important to him. “I really discovered a connection with a higher power and with God as I understand him probably five years ago when I got sober through the 12 steps of Alcoholic Anonymous,” he said. He went into rehab in 2007. He said: “A large part of that program is giving the will and character life over to God, or a God as you understand him, and prayer is also a big part of that program as well. I feel that that really helped me overcome a difficult time in my life and since then has really deepened and enriched my life in a lot of ways.” Metcalfe, 37, plays a lawyer in God’s Not Dead 2, the sequel toGod’s Not Dead, about a teacher who finds herself under attack after she answers a student’s question about Jesus by quoting Scripture. Metcalfe said: “Discovering my own faith and my own connection with God, I brought some of that emotional foundation to the character so the character would be really connected and really fighting for something on a deeper level and that the emotion would come through. It was a lot of preparation.” The movie also stars Melissa Joan Hart, Robin Givens, and Pat Boone. Givens told the same show: “I grew up without my dad. I think that role is so important and in many respects God has sort of been the only father I know. I can’t imagine not having that belief in my life.” The film’s producer David White recently defended the plot after it was criticised by atheist blogger Hemant Mehta who accused it of promoting a “fake” Christian persecution story. White told The Blaze: “It’s an interesting thing, because, if it wasn’t real, why do they get so offended by it? I don’t think it would annoy people if it wasn’t true.”