The greatest challenge to your Spiritual Growth...

The #1 Challenge to your Spiritual Life is that YOU are probably an Adrenaline Junkie and you enjoy the ‘buzz’ of busyness and a filled social calendar…

For most of US the best thing we can to have a great relationship with God is to trim our entertainment schedule, go to bed at a decent hour – for you with your bodies at the stage you’re at and the school schedule you keep—you need to be in bed b/w 9 and 10 PM at the latest. What it means for most of us is using our powerful thumb muscles to mash that little red power button on the romote control.

God doesn’t ‘cram’ well. He doesn’t fit into neat tidy appointment boxes in our palm pilots and school homework planners. He isn’t like fast food that can be swallowed without chewing as we speed down the interstate to our next ballet lesson or off to the movies with our buddies.

He’s more woven into the fabric of all our moments if we’ll just take the time to experience Him. He’s HERE. NOW. Always. Present. Powerful. Waiting to experience life with us. He’s available. He’s the source. He’s the life. He’s the way. He’s the main course of life. We eat all the scraps and trash that life throws at us and wonder why much of the time we feel like we’ve got spiritual indigestion and something just isn’t quite right. We hurry and rush to get to all of our Christian activities – we have Christian Basketball, Christian Dating services, Christian chat rooms, Christian movies, Christian BUSY-NESS and it makes us absolutely sick. It’s a perpetual appetizer with no meat. It’s an eternal Blooming Onion or everlasting cheese fries with no steak. Life the way we live it is making us sick and tired and leaves us wondering ‘is this all there is’ and struggling to connect to God.

Here’s the great news – God desires to be your source. Here’s the bad news – something has got to GO. You’ve got to eliminate something ‘good’ from your schedule. The challenge for most of you is that you’re doing all kinds of ‘good’ stuff. You’re in Early Bird AP classes, you’re a leader at FCA, you’re working a job, you’re involved in leadership here at CBC, you’re busy for GOD, but you don’t have time to be with GOD.

God is not a genie in a bottle available for you to just grab the bottle (we’d call it the Bible) and just rub it and then poof up comes the genie and you get your three wishes. God is god, not a genie. He loves you, but He will not be rushed or pushed into granting your wishes (in church, we call them prayer requests). He will meet with you if you will carve out the time from all your busyness and all your ‘stuff’ and take the time.

Some of you are frustrated spiritually right now and you are pointing the finger at all kinds of stuff and other people – like the other kids in this group just aren’t spiritual enough –that’s why I’ve got spiritual heartburn and I’m nor really enjoying connection with God the way I want. The problem is not the people sitting around you…the problem is sitting in your chair and looks at you in the mirror every time you pop a zit. It’s that you are just too busy.
Busy doing ‘god stuff’ does not satisfy. Busy doing ‘good stuff’ will not feed your inner person. Connection—strong, vibrant connection to God is all that is gonna quench your thirst. It’s all that will satisfy.

It can’t be rushed – it can only be savored. You cannot dictate to God when and how to meet you intimately, but you can set the table and invite Him in to be with You.

The root leads to the fruit and tending roots takes time and commitment. It takes ‘cutting’ stuff out of your schedule…probably media. Probably, the radio, television, the telephone. It takes giving God space in your life so that you can really experience Him.

If you come to me and tell me that you’re starving spiritually and that this church just doesn’t meet your needs I’m gonna look back at you and ask you ‘when’s the last time you carved two hours of high quality time out and gave that as an offering to God to just be still and slow down and marinate your spirit in his presence. You cannot rush your spiritual life. You cannot fake it. You cannot yield fruit if you’re not connected to the root.

Gardening your soul so that you enjoy an intimate connection with God will force you to use your most important spiritual muscle often. It will force your thumb muscles to get huge from using that remote control to turn off the noise in your life and replace it with time with Him.

To learn more about connecting with God reflect on these great passages from the Bible. John 15 and Micah 6:8.

Go carve some serious time out of your overloaded schedule and invest it in time with God.

Have a great day,
Jeff Fuson


p.s. If you are a 'rising leader' who's excited about advancing the Kingdom of God, then you need to RUN to Rising Leader Alliance.com and splash around a lot! Join the community, sign up for FUEL, grab some cool tools, maybe even post your story so that other leaders will be inspired by what God is doing in your life!

p.p.s. If you lead an organization that could use an ENERGY INJECTION then consider bringing me in to do a Custom Crafted Training Experience for you. I'm launching some very cool Adventure Training and Action Learning Experiences that you and your team could benefit from. Drop an email to me and we can talk more.

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p.p.p.p.s. Okay last one! Feel FREE to distribute this content as long as you pass it along in it's entirety with all links in place pointing to original urls. Give credit where credit is due and use this to build other people up. Thanks for playing and thanks for passing this along. Jeff Fuson