The Choice is Yours

Hi everyone! I hope that you are enjoying the love around you! I missed talking with you, and I thought it would be a good idea to remind you of the choices that you can make about your relationship with God. I would love to hear what you think. Take a listen and do your research to find out who you are and Whose you are... until next time! 

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:11

Welcome to the Resilient Living Podcast. I am your host, Terylyn Minifield, excited about another opportunity to talk about resilience. I missed you guys. I am so happy to be back in the studio recording a podcast and talking about all things resilience. Happy September! I am so excited for this part of the year. Here in Arizona, we suffer through the summer with triple-digit heat and all things that are hot. And as September approaches, it is the indication for us here that things will become cooler and we have the beginning of the best months of the year where we have the most beautiful weather, we are outside all the time, and we are just enjoying all of the environment around us. So I'm pretty excited about the cooler months coming and just all of what we get to enjoy here in this beautiful state. I hope where you are, you are enjoying where you are, that you're enjoying the love around you, and that you continue to feel that love in the midst of all the things that are going around us in this world. There is still a lot of division in the world. There's still a lot of back and forth, my side, your side, a lot of judgment, and a lot of all those things that make up a toxic environment. And so I'm over here choosing to stay out of the toxicity of all of the intervention, all of the things that are going on. I am just over here doing my best to just stay happy and enjoy my family and just doing all the things that I know to do. You know, it's so incredible to remember that we really have choices that we get to make in order to preserve ourselves. And what I mean by preserving ourselves is that we don't have to think like everybody else thinks. You don't have to pick the side that makes other people happy. You get to pick the side of what you believe and stand in what you believe without having to defend it, argue, or do anything other than live the life that God intended for you to live. As you guys know, I'm a believer. I'm a believer in God, I'm a disciple of Jesus Christ. So I have a whole different method and scheme as to how I live my life because I do believe in praying and reading the Word of God, and I believe that my time spent with God continues to shape my world. It continues to give me the choice of being able to be happy, full of joy, full of peace and long-suffering, and all of the fruit of the Holy Spirit, in order for me to continue to deal with everything that we deal with on the outside. The outside. So understanding and knowing that, we have a choice as to whether we're going to listen and be a part of that, or if we're going to set that aside as far as that's their choice and make the choice that's best for us with continuing to focus and focusing on us growing our character and our relationship with the one that created us. You know, I really truly believe that the normal in this world is really beneath the plan that God has created for us. God wants us to live an abundant life. Now, I think a lot of people get abundant confused with just the idea of prosperity. That you should have a lot of money, that you should have a lot of things. You can have those things as a believer, but the key is not to have those things, have you? You know, part of what Jesus died for is for us to live an abundant life. But more importantly, the abundance should be in our relationships, it should be in our health, it should be in our thinking, an abundance that we want to have the very best in our life. Not to oppose someone else, but to live the fullness that God designed for us when He designed and created us. We should be choosing that. You know, I definitely continue to work on myself and I spend time with God praying and reading and just really continue developing my relationship with God so that it becomes more of a consistent, constant force that drives me to the next level. I'm not worried about the fads or trends or movie stars or people in positions of authority and what they think or how they feel. I am more concerned about what God feels and thinks and what I need to do and rely on for myself. You see, I made a decision many years ago that I understood that God did create me. And when he created me, he created me in his image. And when he created me, he created me to have a relationship with him. And he allowed and created his son to bridge the gap of all the things that I wasn't entitled to. When I made my relationship with Jesus, it actually hooked me up to everything spiritual that's available to me. It's what we call in the church world a new covenant was established, a new covenant that allows me to live my life and not just live it, but learn my life and continue to tap into where God has for me in order to learn more about who I am and what I was designed to do. So when you make that choice, there is just more hope, there's more joy, there's peace, and there's all these divine emotions that come up inside of you that are available to you to live your life according to that, rather than everything else that the world offers you. There's not a day where I feel like I need to be jealous of someone, or I need to be depressed about something, or I need to be angry about something, or I need to be judgmental about something. All of those things are really a human emotion that I don't even want to tap into. I want to tap into the divine emotions that God gave me when I accepted Jesus in my heart, and I get to live according to the new covenant that Jesus established. It really is simple. Although it may sound complicated, it's simple. And the simple part is making a choice to continue to strive to learn more about who you are in God, taking the time to be in a community that continues to talk to you about the things of God. Going to a church that's a Bible-based church that takes the scriptures and go through the scriptures for understanding. And really having the time and making the time to have that personal sit down and talk to God like I'm talking to you. You know, some of us have best friends, and you know, the way that you end up having a best friend is time spent with that person in order to learn and know them, and they know you. And that's the same thing that you can have when you have a relationship with God. Now, some people may argue with me and say, you know what, God's not there talking back to you. Well, isn't he? There are a lot of things that you get inside of your knowing that you can understand what God is saying to you, whether it's reading his word, whether it's listening to the small still voice that continues to talk to you, or an opinion that you believe you're leaning towards. All of that can be God speaking to you in order to give you more of what he wants you to have and learn about him. And you know, I believe as I'm continuing to grow in the things of God and in my relationship with God, you know, I'm really learning that whatever is magnified is what takes my focus. So if I'm having bills that I need to pay, and that becomes the thing that's magnified that I've got to get done or I've got to get money to do this, then I become distracted with the bills and not thinking about the provision that God has given me. Now, you say, Well, you know what? I don't have the money. I don't have that. So that's why the bills would become the focus. Well, I get that. You're absolutely right. But what about exchanging that feeling of the angst, the unrest, the anger, the frustration of not having the money, and turning your your your frustration over to God and exchanging that for the peace of knowing that God has you taken care of? We were designed to fellowship with God. We were designed that it's a cause and effect. The more time that we spend with God, the more we get the effect and benefit of time spent with Him. You know, there is joy available for you, there's peace available for you, there's long suffering available for you, there's temperance available for you, there's faith available for you. And I would recommend choosing one of those emotions and walking through learning how much God loves you in order so that you can love him back in that same way that he loves you. Now, I'm never going to tell you that you're going to be God because that would be an untruth. But the truth of it all is that we really can't measure the amount of how God loves us because I've never given my child for you. But he gave his child for us to be reconciled with him so that one day we'll be able to go and be in heaven. And before we get to heaven, we can have Jesus be our Lord here on earth and have everything that we need in every measure. Because the more time that you spend with God, the more you start craving and desiring the things of God rather than your old behavior or things of this world. And as I continue to go through that transformation, I just want a deeper connection with God. I want a deeper connection with Jesus. I want a deeper connection with the Holy Spirit so that I can surrender to the idea of how I make decisions and lean on God to help me make those decisions. Now, I'm sure some of you are saying, Yeah, that's all sounds all good and everything, but I don't want to be one of those Jesus freaks. I don't want to be one of those people that is so religious and so stuck on. God said, I've got to do this and that. I want to be my own person, my own individual. Well, what I would say to you is that you can be the own individual that God created you as you follow him. God gives you instruction and guidance and comfort in order to help you live your best life. He's just not here to tell you what to and what not to do. He's here to guide you into having a better life. So if you're one of those type people that want to smoke, you smoke. If you're one of the type people that you want to drink, drink. You can still do whatever it is that you want to do. But when you choose to have God's best, those are things that don't lead your life to be able to have the best in your health, in your being, in your friendships, in your surrounding. You're making a choice that that choice is not going to be the best benefit for your body and just your whole well-being. And when you have a relationship with God and you understand how much he loves you, you can absolutely start the patterns to retrain your brain of how you want to be in love with him and serve him and learn about him and allow the words and the scriptures to be able to teach you for understanding, for guidance, for a lifestyle that mimics what God created you to be and do. I have so many friends that are in the church world that really trust God for their eternity. They get into relationship with God because they want to go to heaven. But they're not willing to trust God with the everyday things that happen in their life. They're missing out. They're missing out on so much more that's available for them than just making it to heaven. And trust me, I believe there's nothing wrong with making it to heaven, but there's so much more in the life of a believer that you can depend on. That God will never leave you and He'll never forsake you. And He can grow you until you have an indifference to the world and how things are going on, and you have a love for others that comes directly from God. You see, the love of God is an unconditional love that, regardless of what you do, what you say, or whatever, his love will never change for you. And so, my goal as a believer is to get to the point to where the characteristics that I have in my life are the characteristics that God won't want to see, and that glorifies him here on the earth. We have a choice, and we have to continue to choose the things of God and the ways of God in order to have that abundant life that He designed for us to have. So as I'm getting ready for the sweat of weather, and I'm getting ready to enjoy time outside with my family and my friends, one of the main things that will never change is my choice to choose to believe in God and live for God. I'm happy to be back. May all of your resilience that you continue to take credit for lead you to your very own discovery of who God is and how much he loves you and how much he has for you on this earth right now. Thanks for listening.