Spiritual Adrenaline Boost

Spiritual Adrenaline Boost

Are you feeling blue? Has life sucked all energy out of you? Do you need a little boost? Here’s an important verse (used in two different psalms!) to lead us into the right path on our search for spiritual adrenaline into our souls:

Why are you down in the dumps, dear soul?
      Why are you crying the blues?
   Fix my eyes on God—
      soon I’ll be praising again.
   He puts a smile on my face.
      He’s my God.
(Psalm 42:5 & 43:5 MSG)

Yesterday we talked how important it is to feed your soul regularly. Yesterday’s manna does not help today. We need to receive God’s grace day by day. But we also need to search for God on our own. We need to say “He is MY God”. We need to own our faith and be responsible to feed our souls regularly. Otherwise we are soon feeling restless, lost, and down in the dumps.

Only grace – received day by day – can restore us into joyful living. Only grace can sustain our souls in the midst of all craziness around us. So we need to fix our eyes on Jesus. By following him, by studying him, by imitating him we can learn how to live fully. Fellow pilgrims – both past and present – will cheer us on.

Do you see what this means—all these pioneers who blazed the way, all these veterans cheering us on? It means we’d better get on with it. Strip down, start running—and never quit! No extra spiritual fat, no parasitic sins. Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we’re in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed—that exhilarating finish in and with God—he could put up with anything along the way: Cross, shame, whatever. And now he’s there, in the place of honor, right alongside God. When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls! (Hebrews 12: 1-3, MSG)

God does not offer us magic. He gives us Jesus and the cross. But that’s more than enough. Because the cross on which Jesus died for us is also the place of resurrection. The cross was not the end but the beginning.

We are all invited to follow Jesus, to die on the cross, to fully surrender our boasting egos and lay aside our sins and any extra baggage we are hauling around. When we place the hardest battles in our lives on the cross, we invite God’s resurrection power to work within us and our lives. The taste of death in our lives doesn’t need to be the end but the beginning of something new. When we die on the cross God pours out grace upon grace, and breaths life into us. We experience the resurrection power of Christ in our very own lives.

We need to cling to the resurrection power daily. Without this we find ourselves flagging in faith. Without this we leave ourselves vulnerable for predators’ attacks. Without this our energy is leaking out. When we fix our eyes on Jesus – die and resurrect with Jesus – we receive a spiritual adrenaline boost into our souls. Time after time.

 

Gracious God,
Thank you for receiving us as we are.
We surrender our lives to you. Forgive our sins! Restore us!
Take our hurts, wounds, and blisters. Heal us!
Take our difficult relationships, work-related worries,
and all our troubles. Help us!
Come and change us inside out!
Fill us with your Spirit!
Fill us with your peace!
Fill us with your grace!
Thank you!
Be praised forever and ever!
In Jesus’ name,
Amen

Q4U: How/how often do you get your spiritual adrenaline boost?

Be blessed, my fellow pilgrim, as you keep your eyes fixed on Jesus!

Image courtesy of Gary Buchanan . Lining up with Brag on God Fridays & Friday Favorite Things.

6 thoughts on “Spiritual Adrenaline Boost

  1. Visiting from Finding Joy’s Friday Favorite Things. You’re right, yesterday’s manna is no good today. We need to read God’s word daily. Blessings!

  2. Mari-Anna, as flawed humans, sometimes we look away, so we lose our spiritual energy and doubt sets in.
    Like you said, we need to set our eyes back to Jesus and get our everyday manna.
    It is so simple, but we still forget from time to time. It is great to have friends in our community of believers (like yourself) that reminds us. We need to be reminded.

  3. That is one of my favorite translations of those verses in the Psalms. Every time I read it I think t how I’ve let the anxieties of this world to set in. Thank you for reminding me and redirecting me to the truth.  Fabulous post.  Thank you.

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