Your day of resurrection
INsights 068, Friday 13th December 2024
Your day of resurrection
INsights 068, Friday 13th December 2024
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"You who believe, respond to God and His messenger when He invites you to that which gives you life..."
(Chapter 8, Battle Gains, Verse 24)
Just because you are breathing doesn’t mean you are alive.
It means you exist. It doesn’t mean you are truly alive.
The walking dead are everywhere to be seen.
The people with no vision, direction or meaningful ambition.
The ones who have shut off or have been cut off from the open invitation from their Lord to aspire to the heights of their potential.
The ones whose prime pursuit in life is motivated by the things of this life.
The ones who might appear successful and come across confidently but in fact function from fear.
In the hallowed words of William Wallace in the epic movie Braveheart, “We all end up dead, it's just a question of how and why. Every man dies, not every man really lives!”
Being truly alive
So what is it to be truly alive?
It is for your entire being to be in full devotion to your Lord.
It is for Him to be the sole basis of your decision making as to what to do with your life, your energy, your time, your resources, your talents, the opportunities that present themselves to you every day.
It is to know that the specific path you find yourself on is one that you have consciously chosen for yourself as a representation of your highest intention and aspiration for His sake and His cause.
It is to know that regardless of whether you become wealthy or not, famous or not, popular or not, powerful or not, you would still keep going on your current path because you know that’s the one where you’re being truest to yourself and truest to the King whom you serve.
Take away your salary, take away the perks, take away the material benefits of whatever you most busy yourself with… without those extrinsic motivations, is there a deep intrinsic motivation left to drive you forward?
Or is it the case that once you take away those factors, all that’s left is vanity and emptiness?
In short, you will never come truly alive until you are expending as much of yourself as possible doing what you actually want to do more than anything else, engaged in your labour of love where you rise with excitement every day and find yourself consistently in a transcendent state of flow.
As a true believer, that also means that whatever you really want to dedicate yourself to is also what you think your Lord expects and wants from you above all else.
When that intersection occurs – doing what you most want and what you think God most wants from you – first as a dream, then as an actionable proposition, then as a lived reality… it is then and only then that your hidden spark will change to a visible flame.
You're one of a kind
You are unique.
There is no one like you.
There never was and never will be.
Your fingerprint, your retina, your DNA is all yours and no one else’s.
You are a specifically intended work of art by the ultimate Artist.
You have a combination of passions, skills, experiences and circumstances that have never and will never find themselves together in anyone else.
God acts purposefully and you have been very purposefully assembled.
What a shame then if you live a life where you haven’t dug deeply enough or struggled hard enough to produce the best output from your God-given inputs.
If you feel provoked or challenged by what I’m saying… good!
Turn your discomfort, frustration, maybe even your anger, into positive energy to start figuring out your ideal life, in pursuit of a worthy ideal, so that you can earn – by His grace – your ideal place in the life to come.
Your 2025
We’re coming to the end of 2024.
At this time of year, a thought experiment always comes to my mind… what if 31st December next year would be the last day of my life?
What if I knew it with absolute certainty?
With this much more acute sense of my time on earth running out, how would I live my life in 2025?
How would I combine my keenest interests and my best skills to make the biggest contribution to bring value to others for the sake and cause of my Lord?
How would I split my time between furthering my most meaningful endeavour, fulfilling my various sacred duties and whatever else still makes the cut on my to-do list?
So what about you?
Take the time to make a plan for 2025 like there will be no 2026.
How would your priorities change?
Would you stay in your current job?
Would you restart that project that means so much to you but always gets put on the back burner?
Would you try your best to fix broken relationships?
Or create and nurture ones that will help elevate you?
Or have the courage to depart with dignity from the ones that continue to crush your spirit?
Would you take more time for solitude and silence?
Or would you speak up more when previously you would have kept quiet?
Now that it definitely feels pointless, even silly, fearing anyone but God given that you know your appointment with Him is just around the corner, how will your newfound courage show itself?
There is much to consider and, for anyone who takes this exercise with absolute seriousness, probably much to change.
Rest assured that whatever life changes you make with the intention of pursuing divine pleasure and assuming that the end of next year will be the end of your life on earth, there is no way that if and when you find yourself alive on 1st January 2026, you will regret the fact that you accelerated to your Lord for the past twelve months.
No one ever regrets any ounce of sacrifice or effort for their Lord.
What many people will regret is the God-conscious decisions they never took, the God-centred ideas they never translated into reality.
Let’s not be one of those people.
Let’s not be losers.
Let’s become winners.
Those who live each day in total alignment with the end goal.
There is no downside – and there is likely massive upside – in believing, deep down in the depths of your soul that, no matter how young or old you are, how capable or incapable you think you are, what has or hasn't happened in your story so far by way of success or seeming failure... in believing ardently that your best is yet to come, and that our best is yet to come.
God is with you as much as you want to be with Him.
So say goodbye to the old you.
Rediscover yourself, reinvent yourself, resurrect yourself before the Day of Resurrection.
Hope, courage, faith and life!
Until next time.
Peace.
Iqbal
~~~
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