Outline

How to live life to the fullest.
0:00

What is the difference between the world’s view vs. God’s view and having a fulfilled life?
2:39

It’s not about having a living or making a living, but about living the life for Christ.
5:12

How we get trapped in the success of the world.
7:44

How to get unstuck from your regrets.
9:54

How to make amends with your accuser.
12:55

The importance of not having a victim mentality.
15:19

Don’t be a consumer in church, be a participant.
18:00

Embrace the journey, embrace the journey.
20:30

How do we live a fulfilled life without being different?
22:48

Transcript

0:00
Hi, this is Linda and Zack McConnell with The Christian point. Join us for a lively discussion today on the hot topic of living life to the fullest. So many of us we get stuck in a rut and maybe we get stuck in fear or depression or anxiety, or maybe just caught up in what people say about us. But Jesus said, I have come to give you life and live life to the fullest. Yet we have this enemy who wants to kill and steal and destroy. will join us for this discussion on living the life to the fullest. Here on The Christian point.

0:37
Welcome to the Christian point podcast, where we’re all about growing your relationship with God. As lifelong Christian believers, your hosts Zack and Linden McConnell explore topics that affect your world. Together, they are relearning and redirecting our path as we walk through struggles hangups, sins and purpose. The Christian point is a lively discussion that will help equip you with tools provide focus and encouragement from a biblical perspective. Always remember Christ Is The Point. Now here are your hosts, Zack and Belinda.

1:13
Well, today I’m here in Texas, and who has gotten so cold outside. And we have gotten a lot of rain lately, too. We really needed rain badly. But because we were in such a drought, there’s just not a whole lot blooming going on. We’ve got some pansies, and they’re really making a show for it right now. Right now, our porch is decorated with harvest pumpkins and straw bales. And we’re awaiting the family arriving for Thanksgiving. Well, today’s hot topic is how to live life to the fullest. And how many of us want to live life to the fullest. So like I’m scrolling through the internet. And you see book after book or articles on how to live this fulfilled life. And then I’m also thinking about the whole part of television and keeping up with the Joneses are keeping up with the Kardashians. And we’ve just got all of this heaviness. And that does not lead to a fulfilled life. So many people are searching and they’re searching for this of well, how do I really do this fulfilled life thing? And I was talking to a friend and she’s like, well, Linda, there’s just really no quick fix. And there’s no six minute abs. You can’t get the best abs in six minutes. There’s no quick fix on how to get this fulfilled live, because it’s really a journey, right? But I think you know, we’re searching and researching. And then I look at scriptures. And John 10 Verse 10, says, God has come to give us life and have it abundantly. I mean, that is great news. But we’re still searching. So let’s talk about the difference between maybe the world view versus God’s view. And having this fulfilled life.

3:04
Well, obviously, Linda, there is a difference. And that’s the This podcast is all about letting people know what God’s view is versus our own view. Right. I think one of the interesting things is, is that the world’s view is like we’re successful. We’ve acquired success, we’ve lived a fulfilled life, based on what we’ve, we’ve achieved. It’s like, I did it. And I was able to get the big, nice house, and I got the fancy car. And you know, do we wear our money, our clothes, as opposed to you know, Armani versus Walmart?

3:38
Absolutely. Like Keeping Up With The Kardashians, right? That’s right.

3:41
And so it’s all based on what we have achieved on our own. Whereas God’s point, it’s really different. God’s point is that what he portrayed in Scripture, one of the best things is the story of King David. And it’s found in First Kings two and three. And it says, when King David was about to die, he gave his son Solomon, the following advice. And so here’s the advice for you. Do what the Lord your God, commend you, and follow his teachings, obey everything written in the Law of Moses, and then you’ll be a success. It’s not about earthly wealth. It’s really about our obedience, not through what we’ve achieved ourselves. But you know how we’ve obeyed you know, I mean, at the end of the day, when I’m finished here on Earth, I want to hear you’ve done well, you’re good and faithful servant.

4:38
Oh, absolutely. Me too. Well sat Do you think we have that fulfilled life as scripture says, and still you can have those nice cars are that nice house or that nice suit? Can we still have that stuff if we’re following scriptures?

4:54
Well, you know, King David said, obey his commandments, then you will have success. So if we obey His commandments, everything that we do here in life will be that of a successful man. And I think, what we’re waiting into joy, you know, this fulfilled life. They’re waiting until they get that new job. I’ve had someone call me the other day for prayers. And he’s like, if I could just get this new job now, then I could start living. But we need to start living in the here. And now. It’s not about having a living or making a living. It’s not about living the worldly life, it’s about living the life for Christ. Absolutely. Now, a lot of times, we want to wait till we get older, or to a certain age to say, Okay, I’m gonna live life after I finished college. And then it’s after I get married, I’ll start living life, and then it’s I’ll start living life after I’ll have kids. And then well, you know, I’ll start living life once the kids leave. Right? Right, we just keep on waiting. So when do you start living, you have to enjoy life during all those different chapters, those different moments in your life. And again, a lot of the world’s view is in terms of gaining materialistic things. Now, even in social media, the greater your following, well, that says you’re fulfilled, right? Because you have this large following, or whatever your law, Last Post said, that shows that the world’s following you, and they’re affirming this good life that you think that it should be like, all those posts on social media will still leave you very empty inside the Word, the Word tells us that what we see is temporary, and these things will pass away. Absolutely. But the word of God is here, and it’s everlasting. People need to remember that what we see is just temporary. And those things will be gone. But the word of God, he does not change. Right, right. It and that’s how it should be, he should be our first priority. Scripture says, If you want to live your life, you need to lose it. You need to take up the cross and follow Jesus. It’s not about me, me, me my stuff. What did I get? What have I gotten? It’s not about who, you know, it’s about who knows God, and are those things. Those are the ones that we’re supposed to get from him and through him. For me, chasing what I wanted, brought me into drinking too much. That was clearly not living a godly life. Even though I followed everyone, I should have been living God’s way. But we have to surrender ourselves to Him. Life’s not having the career that I thought I would, and not having a massive paycheck. That’s how America define success. That is not how God defined success.

7:50
I totally agree. And I think we really get trapped sack right. And we get trapped in the success of the world. And that what looks good, and how many likes we get, and that we forget, we forget what the Scripture says about righteousness, right? So God’s like, delight yourself in me. And I will give you the desires of your heart. And I see that in a number of ways. So it’s like the Lord will give you desires at that I didn’t even know that I would have. So the world is always lusting. It’s always coveting, it’s envious. It’s jealous. It’s backbiting and grabbing for things. Whereas the Lord is righteousness, and peace and joy and kindness. And that’s what my kingdom is made up of. And I think in the church, too, we get plagued by the spirit of religion so badly, that sometimes we’re a little afraid of success. Were afraid of finances, were afraid of prosperity, afraid to look too successful or flashy. So now you’re afraid of the prosperity or looking too flashy. And maybe that doesn’t look like our traditional Christian, is what you were thinking. Because let’s face it, when we start focusing on the Lord, the Lord starts blessing you. And yeah, envy and jealousy rises up all over the place. So it goes back to the scripture of John 10, verse 10, and the first part of that scripture, Christ came that we may have life and have it more abundantly. And that’s what he wants to give us. And that will look different. I think it’ll look different for everyone. But as long as we’re obedient to Christ, and stay steadfast, we’re going to have that fulfilled life. And there’s one thing people talk about the most, and that’s really their regrets. And Zack, I’m gonna be turning 60 and seven days. So these are my final days to be in my 50s And I look back on my life and I have some regrets. You know, I have some things that I wish I would have done, some things I probably shouldn’t have done. And I have those regrets. And but then I also think about my parents, I lost them a long time ago. And my parents, they were really looking forward to their golden years. But my dad passed away very suddenly at 69. And he never really had his golden years. And then my mom, when she was in her 70s, her body started kind of failing. And she had been waiting to do stuff. And so you can wait and wait. And then you just have a lot of regrets. But sometimes regrets can be good. But then also, regrets can get us stuck. And I can imagine, you’re at home thinking, Well, gosh, I got some regrets, too. So let’s talk about regrets. And how we can get unstuck from those regrets?

10:57
Well, I think you have to first recognize you’re dealing with the spirit of shame, and guilt, and many times a righteous man, well, he falls seven times, and he gets back up, okay? And how many times do we forgive? What 77 times seven, the Lord is constant. Every morning, His mercies are new. And I will actually vocalize and say that, that he’s been nailed to the cross, and I’m covered by His blood. And I have to actually go to battle, I have to take those words of Christ with me and say, Let’s do this. And so I take all those little voices. And we’re marching right up to the throne of the Father, and actually do this. It’s not some religious monitor, this is what I do. So you have to resist the temptation to be stuck. Because the battle is in your mind. Some of those things people say to me is I wish I would have let myself be happier. You know, I wish I would have worked so hard. I wish I would have spent more time with loved ones. And you know, some of those things, you can’t get them back, you can’t get back time. And so to what do we have to do with those things, we have to take it to the throne, I think about a good friend who wasted a lot of his life, and he ended up in jail. Now he’s trying to frantically get back on his feet. So one thing we had to do is recognize that we do have some regrets. And it’s exactly what it is. And then how do we have to get past that. I also think of just different ways that you can overcome the feeling of the enemy. He’s an accuser, he’s a liar. So of course, he wants to keep you in a place of guilt, and shame. And they’re the things that we have done, of course, that lead to those regrets in those actions.

12:47
And then there are things we can do physically. So for example, one of my college girlfriends biggest regrets in life is sleeping with a married man. And that’s something that she will always know that she’s done. And she can’t make amends by going back to that family and say, Hey, I need to make amends as my 12 step says I should. So she finds a way to pay that forward. And whenever she has an opportunity to speak to a woman’s group, she admitted her shame and she apologizes to the women, the audience who’ve been cheated on and says on behalf of the other woman, I apologize. It was not about you and her sin that she committed. It was out of desperation. She’s sorry that whoever she hurt, and you know if that caused you to feel valuable or unloved, and she apologizes, and I really thought that was great. It was a way for her to pray and release that tension and that negativity that a lot of people are struggling with.

13:57
Well, you know, I’m 61. And there are some steps that we’ll have to take. I think that this will help us in here’s the first thing. You have to silence the accuser. You’ve been saved by Christ blood, and that’s it. Right? Your regrets are your sins had been washed away. You can find that in Revelations 1210 and 11. And you’ve got to remind yourself that there’s no condemnation in Christ. Romans one says, Therefore, no condemnation is to those that are in Christ Jesus, you have to forget what lies behind those things that may have done and begin to press towards the price Philippians three and 13. Then at 14 It says, but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead. Remember that it’s God’s will for you to be fruitful. Ephesians 210 talks about that in turn your grits into Thanksgiving. So even for your failures, say God, thank you. And then finally, let your failures keep you humble. So in other words, you won’t forget them. I remember all what you’ve done, and all I’ve done, but they make me humble, they made me realize, okay, but everyone, everyone can be restored by God.

15:19
Absolutely. Then I think another thing we need to remember is not to have that victim mentality, it happens, we’ve laid it at the cross, we’ve been forgiven, and we can move forward. And we don’t have to carry that victim mentality over the rest of our lives, right? Because we are overcomers and Christ and their resolve to change because it’s so easy to go back to those familiar thought patterns. We sit there and rehash it, and those familiar ways that we do things in life, you know, you drive to work the same way, you take a different way to work. Instead, you can change what you’re doing one day at a time. And I say, Let my latter half be greater than my first and learn from those mistakes. And it’s so important, we learn to forgive ourselves, right, and to forgive others too. And, you know, it’s just so important that, you know, we have to make a conscious effort to do that on a daily basis.

16:19
You know, we’ve talked a little bit about regrets. And we’ve discussed some great principles on how to overcome those regrets. So now we’re going to talk a little bit about practical tools. How do we put those things into practice? I mean, we’ve talked about John 1010, it says, Christ came, that would have an abundant life. But it’s that second part that says, we have an enemy that wants to rob us of that abundance of life, and that in Christ that He created that for us to have. So we understand we have an enemy. We know we’re supposed to pray. But let’s go a little deeper with some practical tools.

16:57
Well, absolutely, you have to find your purpose. And you can’t be someone sitting in the audience, as a consumer. And really finding your purpose and working toward that. We all have these gifts and talents that God has given us, there are God given gifts and talents, right. And we have to find our purpose, because our happiness and our fulfillment are those gifts and talents. And our purpose will lead to our passion. And it will ultimately lead to our destiny, whatever it is that God has for us. And just in terms of some tools, some of the things that I know, is you refer to John 1010. And it’s having a mind of abundance. And we have to think we want to live a life of abundancy. And that we deserve it. For one thing, because of a lot of us, we can just get so stuck in regret, we get stuck in the past. And we don’t feel like we deserve to live that life of abundance. We’ve got to move past your regrets. And just be grateful, grateful for where you are today. That’s a wonderful message, be grateful this week of Thanksgiving, just be disciplined, and your personal and professional life and have a personal life, that you build relationships with others, you need to lead by example, you know that in the church and at home and in your workplace, or wherever you are lead by example. And the first thing you can do is smile more, right? I mean, nobody wants to approach a grouchy, frowning type person, and smile more, and you’ll love yourself.

18:38
That’s right. You know, there’s a couple of things you said, Linda, that really stood out to me. And the first is not being a consumer. So many people in church want to be a consumer, it’s all about sitting in the pew and consuming what’s given to them, right? We’re not a consumer in God’s world, we are a participant. And if we’re just sitting on the pews, we’re far from what He has planned and has destined for us. Absolutely. And the other thing that you said that really stuck out to me is to develop relationships. Because so many people who have messed up, they isolate themselves, and they become afraid of oh my gosh, if they knew what I did, or what my past was like, then they’re not going to love me. They’re not going to accept me. And that’s one of the things that devil uses really uses against us to keep us down and isolated. And we need to be free to forgive ourselves. So let’s also be free to go out into the world. I

19:32
really love what you said, and all about the accountability too. And, you know, always talk about discipleship. So if regret is a struggle of yours, get with someone who can walk you through the valley of the shadow of death with you, and you’ll come out on the other side. You don’t need to be stuck there. And none of us really deserve anything at all. God gave it all to us. So it’s like okay, thanks. Que father. So whenever you can keep that humility, it also keeps the enemy at bay. And understanding that guilt will always drive you to do more things that cause you to be guilty because you’re dealing with a spiritual entity, right? And so a spirit of guilt wants to continue to convict you guilty? Because it keeps you bound exactly in prison. Right?

20:25
Right. So cut off the things that take that with you. Right? I think another thing to do is just embrace the journey, because life is a journey. And we need to be flexible, and use our past to help people overcome things to help ourselves overcome things, like you said, with discipleship and obedience to follow opportunities that God puts in front of us, like doing this podcast, and we took long break, because you know, it’s a lot of work. But you have to make the time you have to pray, and you have to get back on track.

20:58
Oh, absolutely. That’s the beauty of the Lord, right? You know, you want to be obedient. And let’s make it even more powerful, because you’re in a deeper place with him now. And I think that’s good for everyone to know, you may feel like you’ve missed it. Because of those regrets. God can completely turn that around for you.

21:18
You know, God does first and second chances in New Beginnings. And I think that when we let that regret, take a hold of us, it just builds up, and we succumb to the second part of John 1010, we let the devil come in and kill and steal and destroy, because you know, we can take it back, we have the authority to walk in that victory that God has given us through Christ.

21:42
Absolutely. And that’s something I use on a daily basis. That reminds me a lot of the things that we’ve already talked about. So it’s surrender as the first one. And that’s what we’re talking about David, he stopped, and he listened to God and said, Hey, what’s my purpose? And well, you tell me what I’m supposed to do next, what’s the next thing I’m supposed to do, and then look to obedience, and we just talked about that. And then we need to attend worship, we need to be there and fellowship with one another. Because that’s how we remember that he’s in charge, we’re not in charge. And we could always go to Him with all of these things daily. And it just reminds us that that beautiful relationship that we have with him, and then the enemy doesn’t have as much room to wiggle in all around us. And when you can always come to him, and surrender to God, and listen, and be obedient, and then worship,

22:41
you know, it’s okay to be fulfilled in life, but also think that we’re supposed to struggle. And it’s part of carrying your cross. And this is just the way life supposed to be. Jesus came to give us life, and give us more. He gets glorified in living helping us to live our life to the fulfilled life that he wants for us. And again, it looks different for everyone who does live that fulfilled life and completely different from yours, it might appear totally different. So we have to obey without being different. And that’s why we can’t watch what other people are doing out there. Especially on social media. I mean, my heart goes out to those millennials, that think that this is what fulfillment looks like, this is what you know, success looks like because they’re judging each other, and they’re comparing their own life. And then you can get depressed, you know, no pressure, because the enemy gets more likes than I got.

23:43
hopes? Absolutely. I really do think we need the Scripture. I think it’s very powerful as a society and how we live that fulfilled life. And you know, we know that God came to give us that life. But we also know that there is an enemy, and we need to be on guard. We don’t need to walk around constantly scared, because there should be no fear in us that we should walk around on guard, and it’s a daily thing. And I believe if you come from an abusive background, and you have felt like I just can’t, I just can’t do it. What will they think if I have this fulfilled life? You know, you’ve got to renew your mind each and every day and walk in that freedom. And my mom’s favorite Bible verse was, this is the day the Lord has made Let us rejoice and be glad in it. And absolutely lock in your purpose with opening up and washing away all the sin and just being in the word.

24:41
Yeah. And I found it when I’m surrendered. And when I’m walking and doing the things that he called me to do that regret. It won’t step into that. In when I move forward with him. I’m fine. I’m so much more fulfilled.

24:58
Absolutely. Well, guys Thank you so much for being part of this discussion just on how to have that truly blessed life, that God came for us to give us abundant life. And Stay on your guard against all the devil schemes, and stay connected to the word and just remember that God does love you, and He wants that relationship with you. Hey, guys, thanks so much for listening to the show today. I hope these messages spoke to you guys. And we would love to hear from you. Write a review, subscribe or share this podcast through Apple podcasts, Google podcasts or go to the Christian point.com. Thank you so much for listening to the Christian point with Zach and Linda and let us know your thoughts by leaving a review. And be sure to subscribe and share these episodes. And we’d love for you to check out our website, the Christian point.com. You can even make a donation there to help us spread the message. And we encourage you to leave your testimony and we would love to pray over you. God’s blessings and peace be with you. And remember, we hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving. Until next time, Christ.

26:08
Thanks for listening to the Christian point. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast and connect with us on Instagram Facebook or visit us on the web at Deep Christian point.com. If you enjoyed the show, please share it with your friends on social media. Until next time, always remember Christ is The Point

Transcribed by https://otter.ai