STARTING WELL WITH GOD III

We started a formula yesterday with S.T.A.R.T and I believe you will follow this series and impact it in your life as you grow in 2016. We start with S-Stop making excuses.

Today, I want to share with you the next alphabet T- take an inventory of your life

T - Take An Inventory Of Your Life

I need to take an inventory of my life. That means I need to evaluate all my experiences. I need to look at what I have left after the failure. I need to take an inventory of my life’s experiences and learn from them. 

Galatians 3:4 "You have experienced many things. Were all those experiences wasted? I hope not." 

The Living Bible says, “You have suffered so much for the gospel. Now are you going to throw it all over board?” I can hardly believe it.

Learn from your mistakes. Failure can be your friend or your foe. You determine if failure will be your friend or foe by the way you react to it. You can choose to learn from it or choose to repeat it. If you learn from it then it can be your friend. However, if you don’t learn from it is your foe. There are four kinds of experiences that God uses to shape our lives; 

a. He uses personal experiences. The family that you grew up in, the people you relate to. God can use your personal experience with your husband or your wife. He uses personal experiences to shape you.
b. He uses vocational and educational experiences to shape you.
c. He uses spiritual experiences to shape you, like coming to church, going on a retreat or reading  your Bible, having a quiet time.
d. He uses painful experiences to shape you.

As you take inventory of your life in starting over, you need to ask yourself three questions. 

1. What have I learned? I know people 40, 50 years old but they don’t have 40 or 50 years of experience. They’ve had the same year of experience over and over. They’ve never learned anything. What have you learned from past experiences? If you don’t set down and think it through, you’ll end up repeating the same mistake over and over again because you didn’t learn from it the first time.

2. What are my assets? What have I got going for me? Have I got my health? Have I got my freedom? Am I still mentally sound? Have I got some friends? Have I got the Lord? Have I got a church family? What do I have that I can get a fresh start with?

3. Who can help me? When we need a fresh start, we need somebody by our side – a friend, an accountability partner, a support person, or a support group. Find someone that can help you. You need other people because you don’t start over by yourself after a major setback or crisis.

You need somebody else to walk along with you. There is one that we can count on to be there to help us to get a fresh start in life. The Lord Jesus will be there, He will help us to pull your lives back together and make sure that we get started on the right foot. 

Stay blessed

To be continued..........