Have harsh conditions caused you to put living on hold? Are you waiting for more favorable circumstances to show back up for your life? Is your plan to really start living this life of yours once the fires are put out and the smoke has cleared?
Girl, don’t you know you were made for this storm? You are built for tough times. You’re like a 4 wheel drive truck with big muddin’ tires … you can get through this honey because you were designed for times like this.
If you should choose to lay low and wait for another day, just know your life isn’t waiting for you. As the days pass, opportunities pass with them and they won’t come back around for you to grab them again. It’s now. Living is here. You don’t have to wait for more perfect days to show up and use what God has put in you.
But hard times cause us to let dreams go stale. Let talents go dormant. Let hopes fade. Have we forgotten we are more than conquerors through Christ Jesus, and that means we are made for this battle. We are built for less than perfect conditions. You are fully equipped for the specific hardship you face.
Now is actually the perfect time for you to show up and live. Right here in the middle of this is the ideal setting for you to decide you are more than what happens to you because you have the power of God living inside of you. These ashes are the ones you’re supposed to rise from. Here, where it seems you’ve let things slip too far gone … Here, where life is freaking hard and you don’t know how you’re going to make it through this … Yes, right here is where you decide you’re going to live!
Why? Because girl you’re not some packaged science experiment. You’re not a sea monkey.
That’s right … I said sea monkey. Remember those miraculous little creatures in a packet that would come to life when you add water? Like for real, they go from dust to tiny little living sea creatures that grow? I always thought it was some kind of trick. How in the world is that even possible? Sea monkeys. That can’t be real.
BUT IT IS REAL! And yes, they come to life when you add water.
Sea monkeys are a breed of hybrid shrimp created in the 1950s by a scientist. This living creation is derived from crustaceans that undergo a process called “cryptobosis.” Cryptobosis is a physiological state where all activity is reduced to an undetectable level without disappearing completely. It’s life with a suspended life brought on by times of adverse conditions. Survival has been adapted to basically put life on hold until things get better.
And these sea monkeys can stay in this state of suspension indefinitely, waiting for better conditions. Is that you? Are you living in a suspended state going through what you’re going through? You’re here, but you’re barely here. You feel like you’re just disappearing.
Oh my sister, this is for you today. You don’t have to wait for conditions to improve to spring to life. You were designed to continue living right through this. How do you get through this? How do you face the reality of your life when things are unbelievably hard and incredibly uncertain? Just like the sea monkeys, you need water. LIVING WATER.
Better conditions for a sea monkey is water. The moment water is introduced, they spring to life, and begin eating and growing. That is our Jesus for our real, messy, hard lives.
Remember when Jesus met the woman at the well? A woman who was an outcast from society because of the choices she had made and the way she was living. A woman ashamed of who she had become. But Jesus knew exactly who she was and everything she had ever done. He met her there at the well that day as she was drawing water and asked her for a drink. She basically tells him to get his own water, SHE’S BUSY WITH HER HARD LIFE?