Just Such A TimeSample

## A Time For More According to today’s reading, living a wide open, spacious life is what we are called to do. But honestly? I  haven’t always found it easy. I’ve alluded to it this week, but due to illness, pain and sickness, my own life wasn’t just small, it was becoming closed off. Perhaps you’ve seen this in others, or maybe you are dealing with this yourself right now? When we began this devotional it was because there was an internal pull to somehow try and reclaim that purpose you once felt so sure of; to reconnect with your passion for Jesus. As I pen this, please be assured I have you in mind. I can relate. Things I once carried had to be put down. People I once did life with were kept at arm’s length. These words, the challenge to not live a small life, resonate so powerfully with me, as I hope they do with you. But it’s too easy to let life’s slings and arrows limit us. We can put a lid on our own potential by shutting down. When we get hurt, we lock ourselves in, so that no one else can get to us, forgetting that nothing good can access our lives either. The key to not letting our pain pin us down is to remember: it's not the amount of pressure bearing down on us that’s important, but the condition of our hearts. Our challenge is to not miss the job God has for us because we are so shut down we can’t turn up for our own “just such a time”. God has invested power and purpose in us through His Holy Spirit and is beckoning us to come into the wide-open, spacious life He intends for us. He has more for us. More than we can even ask for, or imagine. We have to move past the emotional roadblocks that bar our way and ask the Holy Spirit to release our hearts from captivity. Imagine what would happen if we could keep loving, keep giving, keep praying, keep believing, keep pursuing purpose – despite the things that bear down on us. Friends, lean in for one final moment: it’s time for more! Your circumstances no longer need to be a blockade. Let’s clamber on up and use them as a platform! Let’s not write ourselves off, but add ourselves in to His great salvation story. Not in the future, not just in the past, but now, for more – for Just Such A Time.