Ditching Ruts and Taking Flight

Words from Jesus

Making your good better and your better best

I’m in the business of helping you to make your good better and your better best. I want to help you to take the good things in your life and improve them and make them even better. But if you never take the time to think about these things, maybe because you consider the way you go about it a good thing or “good enough,” a set thing or something that works well for you—then you’ll lack the motivation to strive for something better.

When you’ve found a rhythm that works for you in some area, it would only seem logical that it would be My will for you to keep it going. That’s an example of a good habit, something that is helping you to do the right thing, and you’re probably doing it in the same way day after day. But even something that has worked well for you can still be improved when change is introduced from time to time.

Variety and change often build experience and growth, which are important for your spiritual life. New experiences that increase your faith in what I’m able to do through you help you to realize that you’re capable of more than you thought you were.

How can you tell whether something has become a rut in your life that might be holding you back from trying new things, gaining experience and growth? Obviously there are bad habits and besetting sins that clearly have negative consequences. Those are pretty easy to recognize. But there are also routines that can, if left alone, eventually pose a problem or stifle your growth in some area.

Some indications of this type of “bad rut” are:

• If you don’t know why you do it that way; it’s just how it happened or how you’ve always done it.
• If it’s perpetuated because doing things a new way seems too difficult, or you’re afraid of what it will cost, or afraid you won’t be able to learn the new way.
• If it’s so hard to learn something new or do something differently, if it throws you off kilter and you become stressed and edgy because there was a disruption in your routine, then you may have gotten into a rut.

When you identify a rut that fits the definition of a bad rut, then getting out of that rut with a positive dose of the new is not something “nice to do” or to change just for “change’s sake‚” but rather vital for your growth and fruitfulness. You don’t want to get to the end of your life and lament the fact that you’ve hardly ever changed and done new things—whether in your mindsets and attitudes that kept you from being fully used by Me or in your physical surroundings when you could have improved things and benefited from changes that could have been catalysts to growth and progress.

Seek Me about where you might be stuck in a rut and be open to change as needed. I can guide you and help you to break out of ruts that stifle your growth. I am the best rut-breaker of all time. Call on Me to help you smash any chains that hold you back, and I will help set you free.

Take flight

Ruts can be bad for your spiritual life because they make it harder for you to go in a new way, a new direction. Ruts generally yield stagnation. They keep you from moving forward, and they keep you from seeing and embracing new possibilities for growth and development. Ruts keep you from reaching your full potential.

When you’re stuck in a rut, you may feel like you’re moving forward and gaining ground, but you may be going in circles, boring deep grooves in your life without really making forward progress. Maybe because you’ve gotten into a rut as to how you operate, you’re held back, you’re hindered in your progress, and you won’t be able to move forward in some area.

You are meant to soar the skies, charting new terrain, and seeing the world with My bird’s-eye vision of faith and hope. But if you’re stuck in a rut in certain areas of your life, then you’re not reaching this full potential. If you want to fly high in My skies as you are destined to, put your ruts behind you and be on the lookout for the new ways that I want you to operate. Leaving your ruts behind will better your life and make your service for Me more of a joy and a blessing than a struggle or a strain. The new methods I show you, the new things I show you, will be for the purpose of making your work run much more smoothly and your personal life blossom more beautifully.

Ask Me today what ruts might be holding you back from reaching your full potential. I will lead you into all truth, and I will help you to break those chains and chart new paths that lead you forward and take you farther for Me and My kingdom. Then ditch the ruts and don the wings! My skies of fresh ideas and newness of spirit wait to embrace you. You were made for flight; let’s reach your full potential!

Embracing new challenges

It’s tough to change the things that have become second nature to you. But when these things are holding you back, they need to be countered, challenged, and overcome. That’s what makes change so difficult‚ but so wonderfully challenging—you are defying the very elements of human nature in habits that bind you to doing things in the same way. You are altering your course to head in a new direction that will bring forth fruit and growth.

So don’t ever feel that overcoming ruts and bad habits is not worth the effort. It is worth every tear shed, every ounce of effort spent, and every difficulty. This brings to life the fighter in you. It is breaking loose from the ties of routine, of characteristics, of what you have come to believe are unchangeable elements of your personality or circumstances, and it is making a decision to turn around and go in a new direction that will move you forward.

The determination to break the chains of bad habits and ruts can bring out the best in you, for it causes you to rise above the circumstance of comfort and search out a new route—a new challenge in life—and as difficult as it may sometimes be to leave behind the old, the promise of better things ahead becomes a compelling force, a reason to live.

Originally published February 2007 and March 2006. Adapted and republished February 2017. Read by Jason Lawrence. Music by Michael Dooley.

Posted in: audio, change, following god, learning, perseverance, words from jesus

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