Stress Test

Paul Luckett | Brainflurry.com - Stress Test

Under what conditions does love stop being love?

This is what this life is designed to test:

our love for God,

and under what conditions does the love we have fail? What thing, if lost, would cause our love to end?

We are not subjected to fiery trials to test our love for God because God is a sadistic megalomaniac,

but because the first commandment:

‘And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.’
— Mark 12:30

is necessary to perform the second commandment:

‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
— Mark 12:31

and is the only bond strong enough to accomplish God’s grand design: His ever increasing glory through Oneness, making us inseparably one with God.

“Jesus answered him, ‘The first of all the commandments is: “Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one.”‘”
— Mark 12:29

“I in them, and You in Me; that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me, and have loved them as You have loved Me.”
— John 17:23

The love that you love God with is the source of the love for everyone else, and however strong your love for God is, it is the limit of how strong your connection is to the person dearest to you.

If the love you have is less than God’s love, everything supported by it, everything built around it and everything connected to it will fail at some point.

There are some weights in life that anything less than love will not survive.

And there’s a coming day, the great and terrible day of the Lord, where whatever is within anything less than love will be destroyed.

So, our love is tested FOR OUR GOOD, so that our love is perfected,

because God’s love never fails
— 1 Corinthians 13:8

so that we, and everything built on and connected to that love lives and not dies, that our communion as One may be perfect

all for the wonderful glory of God.

What an amazing thing it is that we can be a part of that!

So, I encourage you to count every hardship you’re enduring as all joy! Remembering the point of the test.

Dealing With Feelings Of Failure

Paul Luckett | Brainflurry.com - Feelings of Failure
Paul Luckett playing building with Legos at his desk

I don’t feel like I’m doing a great job, right now.

It’s a good thing that the work my Father has called me to do isn’t about good, better, or best in a moment in time.

It’s about finishing.

“But he who endures to the end shall be saved.”
— Matthew 24:13

If I can just continue in His process to the end, I will be perfected. I will become the finished product, identical to the Picture according to His plan.

“being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ”
— Philippians 1:6

So, if all I can do is take another step, I press. And, if I can’t even do that, I look to Him and I trust.

#struggle

The Ministry Of Everything

Paul Luckett | Brainflurry.com - The Ministry Of Everything

Every situation and circumstance is an opportunity to glorify God.

We give others and each other a real good look at Him from many countless, varied and obscure angles,

by manifesting His character, demonstrating His life in us through how we, by His grace, handle the many countless, varied and obscure circumstances of our lives.

In doing so, we give a fuller picture of Him.

But not only by how we reflect Him, but perhaps even more importantly, by admitting how, in any given circumstance, we have failed to,

by admitting how we have fallen short of the glory of God, by being honest about the unbridgeable gap by any natural means between where I am and His high calling, thereby declaring His excellence and glory: His goodness, His holiness, His righteousness, His justice, His love,

by confessing our sin so we can be healed and obtain the prize, striving to attain to the supernatural power of His resurrection, dying to sin: this world’s way of operating, and rising to life in Christ: the nature of the Father revealed and given to us through Jesus, the only begotten Son of God.

So, whether in life or death, success or failure, we can show people God, by His power and His faithfulness in which He works all things together for good.

Every circumstance and situation; good times, bad, plenty, lack, health, sickness, hardship, prosperity are all opportunities to manifest and glorify God, and to be co-laborers with Christ in the wonderful ministry of making God known.

“But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.

Therefore, since we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we do not lose heart.”
— 2 Corinthians 3:18-4:1

“For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your bondservants for Jesus’ sake.

For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us.

We are hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed— always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.

For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus’ sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.

So then death is working in us, but life in you.

And since we have the same spirit of faith, according to what is written, “I believed and therefore I spoke,” we also believe and therefore speak, knowing that He who raised up the Lord Jesus will also raise us up with Jesus, and will present us with you.

For all things are for your sakes, that grace, having spread through the many, may cause thanksgiving to abound to the glory of God.

Therefore we do not lose heart.

Even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day.

For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory,

while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen.

For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.”
— 2 Corinthians 4:5-18