World chaos. Family issues. Personal disappointments. They can combine to create an ugly mix of doom and gloom, leaving you drained, discouraged, or defeated. How can you rise above the mess to victorious Christian living?
You can push the spiritual reset button. Or buttons. Doing so will recenter your thoughts to God, reestablish your feet on a firm foundation of his truth, and refresh your soul.
To keep in step with the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:25), you need to be continually filled with the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 5:18). It’s not a one and done event, but multiple spiritual resets. Making the following five resets a regular and frequent part of your Christian walk results in fresh fillings and fruit of the Spirit—peace, faithfulness, joy—signs of victorious Christian living.
Reset #1 – Prioritize What God Prioritizes
Despite his nomadic, demanding, and imperiled life on earth, Jesus didn’t entertain defeat. He remained focused on his God-ordained mission. From what the adversary intended as sure demise, Jesus brought earth-shaking victory.
What do you consider the primary purpose of your life? Achievements? Productivity? Public esteem? What does God value and long to see in you?
When questioned by a Pharisee, Jesus identified the first and greatest commandment:
Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
Mathew 22:37
He followed with a second, related decree:
Love your neighbor as yourself.
Mathew 22:39
How much self-condemnation, worry, and discouragement would melt away if you were laser-focused on these God-prioritized goals? They shift your gaze from inward to upward to outward. From self-seeking to God-seeking and others serving. And they share a single foundation—love.
Love of God
As our Creator, Savior-Redeemer, and Abba Father, God deserves your first love. To love him with all your heart, soul, and mind communicates an intense love from an undivided heart. All other earthly loves are subject to this primary love. If not, they threaten as idols—something or someone you esteem equal or greater to God. Even good things, if they capture your ultimate affection, will ultimately erode your relationship with God.
Love of neighbor
How often do you judge yourself by your intentions and others by their actions? Guilty as charged. Yet, Scripture exhorts us to be quick to acknowledge our own flaws and slow to judge the faults of others. We are to relate to our neighbors (those with whom we come into contact) with humility, honor, patience, goodwill, hope, and commitment (1 Corinthians 13:4-7). Only when we place the interests of others above our own agenda (Philippians 2:4) are we able to express genuine compassion for our neighbors.
Love of self
This is not a vain or narcissistic self-love. It is a love of self that is rooted in your identity in Christ. Because you are made in the image of God, you have eternal worth. Unlike culture, which flaunts its ideal version of what your image and life should be, God loves you with all your warts, blunders, and insufficiencies. Turn away from perfectionism. Be transparent. And honor God by giving yourself the dignity and care due a child of God.
Reset #2 – Do the Next Right Thing
Are you enduring a hard season of life, unsure of how you’re going to get through the day? Are you fearful you don’t measure up and are failing in what God has called you to do? Or are you battling a besetting sin that threatens to undermine the good in your life? How do you respond to life circumstances that threaten to crush your hope or dreams?
The way forward is to take a step forward with your focus on God rather than on your fears or failures. Seek God in Scriptures and prayer. Allow the Holy Spirit to inform and direct you. And do the next right thing.
God honors faith as small as a mustard seed, so do not despise small beginnings. Let him transform your weaknesses into strength, your tiny steps of faith into God-graced successes.
Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.
Mathew 17:20
Reset #3 – Release Your Cares to the Lord
God never intended for you to carry your burdens alone. Instead, he invites you to surrender your cares to him.
Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.
1 Peter 5:6-7
The degree to which your burden is lifted is the degree to which you trust God. In his providence, he will either remedy your struggle or sustain you through it because he cares for you.
Do you trust God is who he says he is—your redeemer, provider, sustainer, and defender? One who is all-knowing, all-present, and all-powerful?
God has taken extreme measures to provide supernatural resources for when you are overwhelmed or in a hard season of life:
- Living Hope through Jesus’ victory over the adversary (sin and death)
- Direction, comfort, and strength through the ministry of the Holy Spirit
If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? . . . We are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 8:31-39
For a child of God, no adversity is beyond a divine victory. The story isn’t over until Jesus writes the last chapter.
Reset #4 – Play the Long Game
When the weight of the world’s messiness threatens to paralyze you in its mire, remember this world is not your home (Hebrews 13:14 ). Play the long game by embracing an eternal perspective.
To embrace an eternal perspective means becoming spiritually farsighted—elevating eternal fellowship with God over present troubles, recognizing the transience of your life on earth, and understanding the broader scope of God’s story and how your life connects to it.
Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.
Colossians 3:2
For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.
1 John 2:16-17
With an eternal mindset, your energies shift from earthly concerns to heavenly ones. What is important to God—loving people and His Word—become important to you. Rightfully so. These alone will outlast this world.
Therefore, we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
2 Corinthians 4:16-18
Reset #5 – Choose Gratitude
The best time to give thanks may be when you feel least like doing so. Counterintuitive, right? But true. Gratitude is not only a virtue but also a means of coping and healing. Perhaps that is why God exhorts us to be grateful in all circumstances, even the hard ones. He knows what’s best for us.
Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
1 Thessalonians 5:16-18
There is a difference between feeling grateful and being grateful. The latter is a heart attitude, a prevailing mindset, an expression of faith, a choice. It doesn’t waver with the peaks and valleys of life because it recognizes God as sovereign, loving, and faithful. It is gratefulness that leads to hope and resilience.
Resets & Resilience
Whether you are burdened by personal troubles or disheartened by cultural or global hostilities, return to the foundation of your faith by applying these keys to victorious Christian living. Resilience and joy follow each time you reset your soul.
My Scriptural Prayer for You
May the Lord be your light and your salvation; so whom should you fear? May the Lord be the strength of your life; of whom should you be afraid? His grace is sufficient for you, for his power is made perfect in weakness. So boast all the more gladly of your weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon you. For the sake of Christ, be content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and difficulties. In all these things, may you become more than conquerors through him who loves you. Amen. (Psalm 27:1, 2 Corinthians 12:9, Romans 8:37)
Resources
Medicine for the Mess – Free monthly online newsletter with fresh insights and bonus resources to help you find God in the mess.
How God-Aware are You? A quiz to measure your spiritual awareness in 3 categories: spiritual nearsightedness, spiritual farsightedness, and spiritual hearing acuity. Includes a guidebook with your personalized scores.
How Gratitude Can Help You Through Hard Times by Robert Emmons
Why is an Eternal Perspective So Important? by Randy Alcorn
Where is God? by Cheryl Liberatore
