We don’t comprehend how short life is and how GRAND God is.

We don’t understand how little of our overall focus is truly on our purpose in Christ.

We shouldn’t be waking up each morning stressed and strategic about how to get all the dishes and laundry done and the errands run and bills paid and diapers changed and dinners made…

Open-Hand Faith

We need to wake up each morning with a passion towards living our best life focused on others, generous towards others, a life of open-hand faith.

If you’ve been a Christian for any length of time and you’ve been to a variety of different churches with different teaching styles, you’ve likely heard a pastor talk about being “open-handed.”

Just as God, through Jesus, pours out His blessings lavishly on us with open hands, we should also do the same for those we come into contact with.

HOWEVER,…

It’s not really that easy, though, right? Let’s be super honest with each other: you and I have to be overloaded in our hearts with a really good, motivating sermon and some really good news about a raise or a huge discount in our auto insurance, and we have to have had a miraculous reduction in our stress from our kids and then we feel awesome all-around and THEN we can open our hands and say, “things are great for me suddenly, so I guess I’ll share some of it with you,…”

Okay, so I dramatized that a bit, but it’s not far from the truth, is it? When we’re living in abundance or it’s been awhile since we’ve had a financial or other “resource” emergency, it makes it easier for us to loosen our grip. You know the white-knuckled feeling, don’t you?

If you know that feeling like I do, then we both suffer from a level of imbalance in the emotional health of our spiritual life. We have tendencies to blame others or ourselves, to intellectualize our circumstances and even become hostile towards others as a defense to this imbalance. When I say the word “imbalance,” I feel like I’m talking about chemical imbalances and that makes me think we need medicine to remedy this, but it’s a spiritual issue and it’s something that we all need to take seriously and address as soon as possible.

We don’t have to live with white knuckles and tight chests and clenched jaws. Before my next post, if you’re interested in exploring this further, go pick up this book. This is a book that I would advise you taking your time with, but if you want a good foundation for my next post, skim through the Table of Contents and flip through each chapter and maybe read a couple of excerpts that jump off the page at you.

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Something to think about:

What areas of your life do you feel you are most closed-handed?

What are some ways that you can begin to “slow down” and recognize that, by opening up your hands, it will feel better to give a piece of yourself away instead of holding it in?