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The best way to ensure that you’re making progress is to make an effort each day to take a step forward. Take a step in the right direction in some area you're working on. Refuse to vegetate or settle down. Stay stirred up by launching out into some new venture. Try something new, learn something new, do something new.
Every day can be filled with excitement and challenges; all you have to do is seek them out. And you seek them out by not being satisfied with the way things used to be. Find a new and better way to do something. Be aggressive in your spiritual life. If you find yourself getting bored or stagnant or feeling as if you're in a rut, then it's time to break out. Look around you: Is there someone you haven't talked to in a long time? Is there something new I’d like to show you in My Word? There’s always something you can do to step up and grow.—Jesus, speaking in prophecy
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The signs of life are principally manifested by motion, action: There must be change, movement. Just so, to stay alive spiritually, we must have movement. …
It is said that Alexander the Great died weeping that there were no more worlds to conquer. The irony was that he had hardly begun to take over the world! He wasn’t even aware that more than half of the world was out there! He had only conquered a little bit of the world—from Greece to India. But because he had conquered the entire world that was known to him, or at least the parts he considered valuable, he believed there was no more to conquer.
The minute you think you have something and sit down to enjoy it, that’s when you’re apt to lose it. That’s why many a great civilization, empire, nation, religious movement, or business has vanished from the face of the earth. They stopped advancing, progressing, and moving. They had all they wanted and thought they had arrived, so they sat down to enjoy it, and whoosh! God blew upon it and it came to naught.
When you stop moving, you die. Try it. Go to bed and never get up again. How long do you think you will live if you lie there and never eat or drink or move or get rid of waste matter? You might last a few days. Some people have lasted a couple of weeks. But if you stop drinking, eating, cleansing, and moving, you’re soon dead! And that is what is spiritually wrong with some people. They have stopped drinking the water of life; they have stopped eating their spiritual food, the Word of God; they have stopped eliminating their daily besetting sins, and therefore they have died on the vine!
There is no in-between! We cannot stop! It’s like breathing: We don’t dare stop or we’re dead. We have to keep doing more every day and progressing. We need to sit down at the end of the day and keep books with our soul. We need to weigh up the accounts and say, “Now what did I do today that I won’t have to do tomorrow? What progress, what accomplishment, what more have I done than the usual things I always have to do each day?”
There is a saying, “All things change, but Jesus never.” God Himself never changes, but He does change some of His tactics and messages and methods, depending on what suits His purpose and the situation. Paul said, “I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.”1 If we as Christians are not going to constantly keep changing our tactics and methods and modes of operation, just as God does, according to what He knows will work and what won’t with each new day and new situation and new people, then we’re going to become has-beens. If we’re not flexible, pliable, able to stretch or shrink or bulge or bend to accommodate the Lord’s new wine—whatever new thing He has for us—then we’re going to burst and lose even what we’ve got, and He won’t be able to give us any more.2
But as long as we love Jesus and lost souls, as long as we seek Him and desire to do His will, as long as we go to His Word daily for fresh vision and inspiration, we have nothing to worry about. He will continually renew us in body, mind, and spirit,3 and we’ll do more than stay alive. We’ll really go places and accomplish a lot for the Lord!—David Brandt Berg4
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If you tend to switch into a mode of monotony when you're dealing with an aspect of your life, it could indicate that you’re getting in a rut. It could be your work, the way you handle your e-mail, your relationship with Me, the way you spend your time with your children, how you say good night to your husband or wife, or how you spend your time off.
It’s fine to have certain activities that you do often, or to have a certain routine of how you do things, whether in your work or with your family. But the danger is when you become resistant to changing those things or doing things differently because you've "always done it this way," or because changing takes time and effort and it's much easier to go on without that.
Maybe some things that you do fairly often are fine to continue to do as you have been; maybe I've shown you that those things should still be done as you've been doing them. But you can also ask Me if there is anything else you should be doing, or if there are any alterations you can make to improve that task or ensure that it's getting done more efficiently or better. Be open to doing things differently and changing even simple things if it will keep you progressing and moving forward.
Maybe the time you spend with your family is fun and inspiring, and you feel that you connect with your children and your spouse in a good and positive spirit. But have you asked Me lately if I have any other counsel or fun ideas to give you for that time?
It can be challenging to be on the lookout for better ways of operating. It takes effort—not just physical effort but spiritual effort—to seek Me for counsel, to put aside your plans and opinions and be open to My will. It takes effort. But that's the point. Ruts don't require effort; My way does.—Jesus, speaking in prophecy
Published on Anchor September 2013. Read by Gabriel Garcia Valdivieso.
1 1 Corinthians 9:22.
2 Luke 5:37–38.
3 Romans 12:1–2.
4 Greater Victories (Aurora Production, 2002).
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