From the very beginning, our Heavenly Father established the reality that life is dynamic and ever-changing. He designed it this way to accommodate our growth in the Lord Jesus Christ. God’s desire is that we go higher and higher spiritually, learning to walk completely by faith and not by sight. He created life to be overflowing with His joy, peace, love, and light. And He wanted us and everything we touch to be full of His glory, but we all know that once sin entered the picture, we were derailed. We chose to abandon God’s Will for our own will, and sin led us astray. But Christ came to the earth and rescued us. He restored our friendship with God and made it possible for us to take our rightful place of authority as God’s children. It is so important to understand that moving forward and higher is God’s Will for us, so that when we’re stuck, His vision will motivate us to spiritually get moving.
Being stuck is a spiritual stagnation that will bog down our lives. No one can prepare you for the heartbreak, disappointment, and hopelessness that comes with being stuck in life. We are weighted down by the emotions and feelings of being boxed in, and our thoughts are consumed with anxiety and worry about the situations that plague our existences. Although we might believe there’s a way out, nothing at our current disposal seems to give us the key. Everything feels so jumbled up and the things that used to make sense seem unreachable and aloof.
Of course, we all want to release the oppressive emotional and mental weight so we can get moving. It’s a little easier to do this when we’re younger and more agile, but as time passes, we become set in our ways, and we’re less apt to recognize signs that tell us it’s time to move. Even though our old ways no longer serve us well, we’ve developed a clingy relationship with situations and habit patterns that hold us back. We must see this for what it is, and deal with it head on. God has instructed us in Hebrews 12:1 to cast aside every weight and the sin that trips us up. Therefore, we have no other choice but to accept that no matter our age or where we are in life, we have the ability to strip off dead weight, and we must be attentive to pray for the guidance and the flexibility to do just that.
The Mind of Christ
We must be ever so thankful that God has placed wisdom and truths in His Word that will help us when we’re stuck. Through the Apostle Paul, God teaches us in 1Corinthians 2:16(NLT), “For, “Who can know the LORD’s thoughts? Who knows enough to teach him?” But we understand these things, for we have the mind of Christ.” This sounds too good to be true. But we can be assured that if God tells us something, it can’t help but to be true, because Numbers 23:19 affirms that God is not a man, so He doesn’t lie.
When we became born again by accepting Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior, we also had to believe in God’s resurrection power. To receive salvation, we had to believe that God raised His only begotten Son from the grave. Our physical bodies were not present when God rose Jesus Christ from the dead with all power in his hands, but spiritually, we were right there with him. Romans 6:4(NLT) declares, “For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives.”
We have the mind of Christ because his Spirit dwells within us through our new birth reality. Through Christ, God made a Spirit-to-spirit connection possible for us, and it must be nurtured through God’s Word. By this, we can know that without this Spirit-to-spirit connection and nurturing, the human heart falls in a perpetual state of deprivation and ache. The impact of not nurturing our souls through God’s Word means that the everyday grind that most of us are used to will gradually slow to a halt. We then suddenly realize that we’re missing something huge. We’re missing something that intellect, wealth, influence, fame, or other relationships cannot fulfill.
The answer to being blocked is to get unblocked, and the answer to being stuck is to get unstuck. To accomplish this, our hearts must aspire and commence to pursue the heart of God. He wants to elevate us to our highest and greatest potential; this is forever His goal for our lives.
Having the mind of Christ is knowing the thoughts of Christ. Connecting with him makes this possible. The natural mind is concerned mostly about this world and all the stuff that comes from living on earth. We must be clear that the mind of Christ is infinitely higher than the realm of the natural mind. They are not the same, for the mind of Christ is motivated by God’s love, and the natural mind is motivated by the flesh. When we yield to the Word of God in our natural minds, we can receive the fresh revelation that positions us higher in Christ. His thoughts spearhead the goodness and power that floods our understanding. We can then see clearer and walk through doors that only God can open.
The mind of Christ is what God offers us through His Spirit, and it bridges what we often perceive as a huge gap between Him and us. When we’re feeling paralyzed by our circumstances and conditions, our thoughts, feelings, and choices are trapped in a place that is beneath our privilege. Trusting Christ will cause us to be released, but again, our minds must also be fortified and renewed, for we are commanded by God to make our natural minds subject (yielded, submitted, compliant) to the mind of Christ, and this is something we are responsible for doing, and we have been empowered by God to get it done.
We Move in Him
Being free to move and being confident that success and happiness are available to you is your destination in life. To get there doesn’t require you to bear down, grit your teeth, and try with all your might to get out of quicksand. But when it comes to surrendering and releasing baggage, this is the image of struggle that many of us hold in our minds. Faith requires us to change this image. Self-effort isn’t going to move supernatural barriers. Acts 17:28(KJV) tells us, “For in him we live, and move, and have our being.” Life is more than trying to be a good person. Life is being like Christ! This is our destiny! It’s achieved through the Spirit, and it is more phenomenal than words can describe.
God loves us unconditionally, without limits or boundaries. He wants to release us fully into His glory, to the point where we are well on our way to understanding the fullness of who we are and who He created us to be in Christ. This can’t be contained in our little boxes. We must step outside of them and step into Christ to know God’s Will for our lives. Jesus Christ teaches us in Matthew 6:33 to seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness first, and to put God first in all that we do. This means we’re to seek Heavenly Father diligently, with a willingness to chase Him down so that He releases the revelation of Christ that we all desperately need. God guarantees that He will meet us in this place of diligently seeking Him if our hearts are truly longing for the transformation He offers.
We shouldn’t be anxious, because God knows exactly what we need. In Matthew 11:28, Jesus Christ invites us to come to him, and he will give us rest. We can have peace because our Heavenly Father is the One who does the heavy lifting. Our humility before God in Christ is the key that opens all the wonderful doors of opportunities that He’s placed before us. We can walk through them because of our faith in Him and because we are motivated to please Him with all our hearts.
Get into position spiritually, this will set you in proper motion. It’s not always easy at first, because there are so many distractions, and it can be tempting to occupy our time with other things, but if you’re sick and tired of being stuck, the only way to change it is to get into God’s Word. It’s our training manual for going higher in the Lord, and it will train us to do the things that Christ did in order to stay in the presence of our Heavenly Father continually. The first step toward making any shift in life always begins with the Word, and we will never get away from this pivotal truth. You’ll find that when you do all that you can to follow God in your heart, your mind will soon make a shift. You will begin to think like Christ, and this will release you to move in the direction that God has destined for your life. ■
Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
“Get Unstuck in Life” written by Reverend Fran Mack, edited by Kim Times, for Sundie Morning Sistas ©2022. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord!