Receive before you achieve! part 2

If you read the first part of this blog, you’d remember that I asked you to consider a perspective with me: “Receive before You Achieve”. You can read Part 1 of this blog HERE. We have been created to receive the things that are ordained by God to only be received and not achieved. Yes, there are matters in this world that are up to us to achieve, work hard, and earn. However, there are more essential and eternal gifts God has given us that can only be appreciated as they are received, not achieved. And only when we learn to receive them from God before we achieve anything in life on our own, then will we feed and nourish our souls in a way that won’t depend on what we achieve in this world, but on God truly wants us to receive, appreciate, and enjoy as the GIFT that it is meant to be.

How Do We Receive?

Better way to ask the question is, “WHO do we receive”? There are numerous gifts that God has given us to appreciate and receive, but I want to simply talk about the source of them all, the Gift of Jesus.

6 Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, 7 rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. Colossians 2:6-7

God’s gift for us to receive for the security and nourishment of our souls is Jesus. Receive Jesus before you even think of achieving anything else in this world. Why? Because Jesus has power and authority over all things, over your life, and for all eternity. Jesus is not to be earned, yet He provides the greatest of rewards and inheritance. Jesus is a free gift who is accessible and available to simply be received by faith every day and all the time. He is the source of what it takes to have a healthy soul.

Now, if we don’t learn to RECEIVE Him within a world of achievements, we will always fall into the stressful and depleting cycles of this world, no matter how much we set out to achieve. However, if you receive Jesus Christ as your savior and your sustenance, you can live a set-apart life from the cycles of the world, and it will lead for your entire created being or soul to be filled with the assurance and acceptance that it needs to be full. After that, aim to achieve whatever you set your mind to. Go after your full potential of achievements. The difference is that your soul will be free from being defined by what your achievements will be, and as a result, your soul will be healthy for it. That is simply the way God wants it to be.

Let’s make RECEIVING as practical as we can!

How is it we are supposed to “receive before we achieve”? Where do we go? What do we do? This is when we can begin to talk about how and when to reorient our lives to “receive before we achieve”. Jesus has left us tangible channels of grace to receive Him while on this earth. What are they? I’d like to talk about these channels of grace in a way that they will be easily remembered. They all start with the letter “P”, and here is a simple visual you can always remember them by:

His PROMISES

We first talk about receiving Jesus through the means of grace he has given us as finite human beings on this earth, “His Promises”. Jesus has given us a tangible way of receiving HIM by connecting to and receiving His promises for your life, as they are found in God’s Word. It is so incredibly vital to allow the promises of God to fill and nourish our souls with God’s truth. Scripture is filled with thousands of God’s promises that will never be broken and are always true; Promises about who God is and who we are; Promises about our origin (where we come from) and our destiny (where we are going); Promises about life’s meaning and morality on earth. Jesus meets with us through His promises found in his word. That’s how we receive Him more and more. His promises aren’t simply words to admire. They are living and active, and they have the power to feed and direct your life.

Your words were found, and I ate them. Your words became a delight to me and the joy of my heart, for I bear your name, LORD God of Armies. Jeremiah 15:16

His PRESENCE

The next channel of grace that I want to talk about is “His Presence”. We receive Jesus by having the privilege to be with His presence throughout our daily living. This 2-part blog has been about nourishing our souls, and because our souls go beyond the physical, we must expect that it will take more than just physical food to feed ourselves. Jesus refers to himself as living water and bread. He also promises that he would be with us wherever we would go. He does this through the means of his comforting and guiding presence of the Holy Spirit. So, what do we do? How do we engage with His presence for ourselves? We pray! We talk to God. We cry out to him. We confess to him our faults. We thank him. We ask him to fill us. We worship him through singing. We go back to his promises and trust in them, walk upon them, obey them, and share them with others.

Do not fear, for I am with you. Don’t be discouraged, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will hold you up with my victorious right hand. Isaiah 41:10

His PEOPLE

The third means of grace that is important to discuss and understand is that we receive Jesus through “His People”. For some reason, beyond what I personally comprehend, God has chosen human beings to be the way we connect with him. Therefore, being present with His people is how we receive of Him. That is the reason why Jesus left us His Church to be established as local expression of His body throughout the world, so that we would connect with him through our community and fellowship with others. In other words,

we must be a connected part of a local church community to receive of Jesus and nourish our souls.

Jesus is among His People, working in His People in order that we may receive of Him through His People.

22 I have given them the glory you have given me, so that they may be one as we are one. 23 I am in them and you are in me, so that they may be made completely one, that the world may know you have sent me and have loved them as you have loved me. John 17:22-23

Let’s be real with ourselves!

While we are in the world, we will always want to fight God for our independence. Naturally, we will always want to ACHIEVE our way to success and satisfaction. But that is not the way God created us to nourish our souls. God wants us to be dependent upon Him for our lives. Therefore, we must always seek and even fight to re-orient our lives in order to fall under what He has ordained for us to “Receive before we Achieve”. God has left us means of grace to do so: His Promises, His Presence, and His People as a simple breakdown to understand. We cannot afford to go without these channels of God’s grace for the health and nourishment of our souls. On the contrary, these are the ways we connect and commune with Jesus, and our souls will be blessed for it.