When Kaia finished college six years ago, she promised herself that she would work a few years in the corporate arena, and then go back to school for her masters. She wanted to enter grad school immediately after graduating college, but life kept getting in the way, despite her convictions. Student loans, car payments, and an ailing sister back home demanded her attention. Ultimately, Kaia ended up working for a company that made her conviction to get her masters a distant memory. Her employers promised lots of perks in the beginning, but in the end, they didn’t deliver. They care more about feeding a culture of cut-throat competitiveness and high-performance. All her spare time is eaten up by work, and Kaia is exhausted, unhappy, and unfulfilled.
Ambition and aspiration are healthy in life, and they can add fuel to our pursuit of greater faith. As God’s children, we should continually demonstrate a meaningful level of gratitude and thankfulness towards God for all His many blessings, but this doesn’t mean that we have to remain in the same station in life all the time. We can be thankful to God while also being dissatisfied with things the way that they are and desiring them to change. However, we must also allow for the possibility that our dissatisfaction with things the way they are is sometimes a sign to switch gears. Often, it’s a wakeup call to strengthen our conviction towards the things of God.
Lamentation 3:22-23(NLT) is a favorite passage for many of us. It says, “22 The faithful love of the LORD never ends! His mercies never cease. 23 Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning.” Our Heavenly Father is always up to something new and wonderful! He never changes, as Malachi 3:6 tells us, but as we grow spiritually, our eyes are opened wider to His goodness and all that He has in store for us. We see things we never saw before, and this will never end because God’s mercies never cease.
The wisdom of Proverbs 19:21(NLT) says, “You can make many plans, but the LORD’s purpose will prevail.” This Word not only informs our aspirations and plans, but it gives us a strategy for prioritizing them. God’s purpose will always and forever come first. This is the foundation on which every detail of our existences will rest. The fragility of all human plans is that they are subject to life and circumstances cooperating fully. Often that doesn’t happen. Life will always get in the way, and this should open our eyes to the reality that we must surrender to God’s Will, and our plans sometimes have to take a back seat.
We should also recognize that we can be enslaved by our conviction to our own plans. Like Kaia, we can hold onto them for too long rather than yielding them to God. He tells us in Romans 8:28 that He’s the One who causes everything to work together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. God never misses a beat. Long before we entered our mother’s wombs, He had a good plan for our individual lives, and He is committed to see us thrive and live abundantly in Christ.
We must live by faith! Hebrews 11:6 informs us that there is no other way to please God. Kaia’s issue was one that many of us have when it comes to faith. We think our acquisition of the education, the spouse, the money, the house, job, car, or any other thing we covet will fill the void in our lives. We believe that the thing we desire will make us happy and fulfilled, but we don’t believe that our love of God and the spiritual blessings He’s provided will fulfill us. We don’t believe that seeking Him and His Will will fill our cups to overflowing. Because we don’t believe this in the deepest part of who we are, we’re running on fumes, and life holds little pleasure for us.
Jesus Christ commands us in Matthew 6:33(NLT), “Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.” God promises to provide us with everything that we need, and this promise is conditioned upon our responsibility and conviction to seek God’s Will first. We’re to do this in everything that we do, and we’re to live righteously before Him. Our Heavenly Father is our Creator. He crafted and designed us, and He created us in such a way that His Will fills every nook and cranny of our beings, through and through. His Will is the answer to all our problems, and His Will is the engine of our faith. It keeps us full with His breath of love, light, and life.
Pursuing a degree is admirable, but if we begin to think that things like this dictate whether we can have a good life, we are barking up the wrong tree. God is our sufficiency! He takes care of us and all those we love! Submitting every ounce of our existence to God and trusting that His Will is always best for us will cause the right doors to open. Honoring Him with our whole life and being obedient to His guidance and direction, this is the conviction we should hold firm to with all our might. When His Will is the driving force of our existences, His plan and purpose will inspire a greater vision in our hearts, and we will witness that seeking His Will is a treasure that will never stop blessing us.■
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.
“Hold Firm to Your Conviction”, written by Fran Mack. Edits by Kim Times and K. Stephens for Sundie Morning Sistas ©2024. All rights reserved. All done to the glory of God through Jesus Christ, our Lord! SMS is dedicated to inspiring and encouraging Christian Women through the Word of God.