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Who are you this Christmas?
Which character from the nativity do you identify with?
This is a guest post written by my husband Melese.We all know the story of Christmas and can picture the nativity scene in our heads.
Mary who was pregnant but is now a mother.
Her fiancé Joseph, an unexpected father.
The newborn baby Jesus who is so much more than an ordinary baby. He’s a source of every joy.
The family hosting them at their stable and lending Jesus their manger.
The smelly shepherds who are included in the story to the surprise of many.
The angels who brought good news.
The wise men who came to Bethlehem much later but for some reason are pictured in the nativity scene.
The residents of Bethlehem oblivious to the events of that holy night.
The animals whose stable is ‘invaded’ by all these strange people and heavenly beings.
Who are you this Christmas?
Are you like baby Jesus who brings joy to the world?
Are you like the shepherds? Worshipping Jesus but astonished by what you are celebrating today?
Are you like the angels? Proclaiming the good news to the surrounding?
Are you like the innkeeper? Opening your hands to the strangers, the lonely, hungry, forsaken …?
Are you like the animals in the stable? Observing what people celebrate this Christmas.
Are you like Mary and Joseph? Carrying ‘their’ baby, wondering who he really is and watching as the story unfolds? Theirs is rather strange and crazy.
Are you like the people of Bethlehem? Heard about the events but living their own lives, maybe just stopping to say “Oh, what a cute baby! Blessings!”
Maybe you are a resident in the village who don’t know what’s going on or don’t want to know. You’re not bothered by this nonsense going on around.
This Christmas, are you caught between what happened in the village of Bethlehem and the lights, the tree and all the rest of it?You may have even sent the wishes to your neighbours and friends but have you reflected on what is written in the cards?
To celebrate Christmas, like it was the first Christmas, means going back in time and finding oneself in one of the above characters, and admitting to yourself what is your role in all of it?
That’s not simple. It is like that short but decisive moment when you stood, knelt down and/or raised your hand and voice to invite the living Jesus to your life. You need to have a gut to do so.
Nativity is easy to read but difficult to play in real life. Realising its meaning and message is liberating. Will you be one of the characters who realise that Jesus is G O D who became H U M A N and will give him glory He deserves? Or will you pass by the stable missing the whole point?
Merry Christmas from Bethlehem, Judah.
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Rushing is rubbish
Good things take time. There’s more to life than rushing from one thing to another.
After reading one of the devotionals sent by my friend, a missionary in Poland, I felt that one of the items I make for Good Good Life shop would be very suitable for his ministry. Wanting to help and bless him, as well as the potential recipients, I offered to make 100 of the crosses pictured below.
He agreed and I ended up making 70 for men and 30 for women (in Polish they’re slightly different). As you can see, each cross has a lot of detailed decorations and each piece requires time to be done properly. I’d previously done a few of these crosses and unrealistically assumed a hundred to be done as quickly. And quickly disappearing from my list of things to do, allowing me to move on to the next ‘project’.
As you can guess, my approach wasn’t quite right and also, it took longer than expected. When I was about to get upset about it, God showed me an important truth.
Lesson learnt
Good things take time. If something is to be done well and with the right effect, it needs time and effort. Simple but, more often than not, hard to apply in a busy life. When I was getting angry about how long it’d been taking me to make the crosses, God reminded me why I’d signed up to make them in the first place. I wanted to bless others and know that the things I do, make a difference in other people’s lives.
I have a tendency to approach things in life as projects. I come up with an idea, execute it as quickly as possible and tick it off my list. The last element is the most satisfying. Yes, I have a problem with placing too much value on just having things done. It’s something I’m working on.
The truth is any good thing take time. We don’t build a lasting relationship overnight, we don’t form character in a day, we don’t learn things in an instant, we don’t build a career in a month. Jesus was in the wilderness for 40 days, not 40 minutes. Israelites trekked through the wilderness for 40 years, not 40 days. Abraham waited a hundred years for Isaac to be born. When people rushed not many good things happen. When David saw Bathsheba taking a bath and followed his impulse immediately, he ended up sleeping with another’s man wife and eventually killing the man.
Multi-tasking is overrated
The world around has convinced us that we need to be all and do it all but it’s not true. So we do things in a rush to fit in an hour or a day as much as possible. But even then, we can’t do everything and it only leaves us frustrated. Deceived by this lie, that I have to keep doing things in order to be a valued member of the society, I’ve mastered rushing but I’m not really proud of it at all.
Have you ever been so hungry for spare time that when you finally got it, you wanted to do a hundred things at the same time? I have. Since I have children, time is scarce. I’m a person who likes having time and has way too many ideas about how to spend it. When I have an hour or a half free, I want to do everything I had not done in the past three years.
I tend to cram in so many things in any given time that I end up rushing through each of these tasks. I don’t take time to think about them and prepare to do them. I often go through them without enjoying and appreciating what I do. In the end, I do them just for the sake of doing.
Sad results
When I rush I end up dissatisfied with myself, because I think I’m not quick enough, while in reality, I can’t do 10 different things in half an hour. In the end, I feel like a failure. In all of that, I also focus only on myself and on being ‘the best’, and forget about God’s presence in every, big or little, task. We can’t be praying 24/7 but we can worship God 24/7 with the things we do and how we do them.
Rushing brings dissatisfaction, lack of enjoyment, opens up space for anger and affects other in a negative way. It makes you a machine doing things without meaning. Have you also experienced it?
Rushing affects the mind and makes us to concentrate only on the things to do, not on the people, and on our own wellbeing. It affects the mood and stirs up unnecessary anger. Perfect circumstances for the devil to use and make us feel worse about ourselves.
Break the cycle
We can easily avoid all these disappointments by doing less and by taking enough time for each thing. Do one thing, do it properly. Start, finish, and take time to look at the results and thank God for his provision.
I’m learning to stop rushing through things to start rushing to God when a temptation comes in.
Good things take time, because God wants us to savour them, to learn something in the process and to form our character. When we rush from one thing to another, we don’t take time to appreciate what we’ve just done. We don’t take much notice of other people’s feelings and our satisfaction in ourselves and in God isn’t very high.
We need to prioritise being over doing. If, like me, you rush from one thing to another and rush in life, I pray for both of us today that God helps us to break that cycle and helps us to slow down. I pray we’ll do less but better and in a more satisfying way. And, that in general, we won’t be assigning more value to do doing than to being – in the presence of God, with others and on your own.
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What really is a good life?
Good good life isn’t about money, material goods or even a happy family. It’s more than that. It is perfect peace, security, love and joy. Do you want to live a life like that? Find out what it means and how you can do it.
When someone talks about living a good life, what comes to your mind?
Do you think of sitting on a sunny sandy beach sipping a nice drink and looking at the sea?
Or maybe, you think of having enough money to ‘do nothing’ for the rest of your life?Whatever you’ve got in mind, chances are that, the person next to you imagines the good life as something completely different. Even you yourself, at different seasons of your life, might dream of a different kind of good life.
In my 20s, my idea of good life was to do as much as I could, attend events, go out and meet new people. I’m still keen on some of these things but today, in my early 30s I want more to spend quiet time with God, go for a walk, write, spend quality time with my loved ones, serve my community etc.
On the surface, our ideas of good life might be completely different but deep inside; it’s about the same – feeling secure, accepted and loved, knowing we’re making a difference and our life has a purpose. It’s also having no worries about today or the future.
It is because the good good life isn’t about the material things, no matter how nice they are.
It is so much better than any of the things you can imagine. It has only one source but it’s available to everyone. You can start living yours today, if you only want to. Continue reading to find out what it is and how to claim it for you.
Your own good good life
A few years ago I was deeply dissatisfied in life. I had good things – I was newly married, had a loving husband, we’d just moved to the UK and apart from the fact that we were starting things from scratch, life wasn’t too bad.
However, I lacked joy and satisfaction and was always looking for something more. I would wake up on my day off and look to fill it up with doing stuff. Having interesting life was my way of finding my identity. I’d been a Christian for a few years then and I knew my joy should come from Jesus but it didn’t. I kept saying that as much as Jesus gives me satisfaction, I still want to have something to do in life that gives it a purpose and a meaning.
I didn’t want a life like this – always searching, always looking for the next best thing. I knew that this wasn’t what God wanted for me neither. He promised me and everyone else an abundant life. He didn’t create us to live a life of misery and dissatisfaction, yet I was living like that.
Finally, I felt that enough was enough. I started praying and asking God to show me how to find ‘this thing’ and how to live my life. Not that I had not prayed for that before but that time I really opened my heart to Him. I was honest in my asking and I wanted a real change.
No good life without God
When we pour ourselves out before the Lord, He will not leave us without an answer. And He didn’t leave me without one. I was praying, reading His word and various devotionals and exploring what it was that would give me a life of satisfaction, peace and joy.
In the process, I’d found my real passions and I’d learnt to enjoy what I have, especially the ordinary life. Most importantly though, I’d found out that I really love God, I want to do what pleases Him and I cannot find my satisfaction outside of Him.
That was the beginning. As I was praying and asking questions things slowly started to look different
It took me a few years to realise this but once I did, I started making a conscious choice to put God first. It didn’t come easily, and you can read about my struggle with that in one of the previous posts, but it’s been so rewarding. I started making a choice to seek Him and His will, trust Him for my every single day and believing that He really wants my best.
Good good life is relying on God
Thanks to book “Captivating” by John and Stasi Eldridge and the “Freedom in Christ” course I have found out the truth about me and God and I started making conscious choice of believing that truth. I can say it’s transformed my life.
I’m now at the point where I can say I’m satisfied with what I have. I’m at peace. I don’t search for more because I know what’s God’s will for my life is and I know He’ll accomplish it in his own time and I don’t need to rush Him. I don’t need to stress about things but can rest in Him. I’m not idle though but I’m doing what is right in His eyes, not mine.
Even though I sometimes feel stressed or anxious about life or health, I learn to trust God one day at a time and I open my heart to Him. I know who I am and where I am going. I’m happy with little things and look with hope to the future, whatever it might bring. I know I’m not alone. Life doesn’t look exactly like I’d imagined a few years ago but I am satisfied and happy. And it’s all because of Jesus.
The choice is yours
You can also live like this and you don’t need to wait until we get to Heaven.
I’m not an extra ordinary person. I didn’t do anything special to get where I am. I am an ordinary Christian with normal life – work, husband, children, food to cook, house to clean and other chores to do but what’s made a difference is that I didn’t want to stay where I was because I knew that that wasn’t the life God prepared for me.
I really believed Jesus’ promise of abundant life from John 10:10 and started claiming it for myself. And you can do too.
The first step to living a good good life is to decide that you want it. You need to make a choice that Mary, the sister of Martha, made and sit at Jesus’ feet. I might’ve been with Martha in the kitchen 99 times but when faced with the choice for a 100th time, I made the right decision.
Life of total surrender
But be aware, the good good life is not a ‘happy clappy’ kind of life. It isn’t about positive thinking, finding your passions or the right circle of friends, nor about having a loving family and a satisfying job.
You can have all these things and still not really be living the good good life. And vice versa – you can have none of these things and be the most satisfied person in the world.
Remember Habakkuk? He said:
Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.
Habakkuk 3:17-19 NIVGood good life is knowing the truth and living by that truth every day, whether it feels like it or not.
You cannot live a good life without surrendering yourself completely to the Lord Jesus Christ. You’ll face troubles, tiredness, disappointments and everything in between but whatever happens you’ll be at peace knowing that God is leading and you can go to Him with everything.
God wants us to be happy not because of what we have but because of Him. In Him we know who we are, we know what we’ve been created for and we feel accepted, secure, satisfied, and meaningful, and we know our life has a purpose.
Good good life today
To me, this is probably the best example of a ‘good good life’ scripture. I’ve seen this kind of life in our contemporaries too. Towards the end of 2019, I posted a short interview with a friend of mine – Mike Murphy, the founder and the president of Warsaw Volunteer Mission, a Christian charity helping less fortunate people in my hometown of Warsaw in Poland.
At the time, he was suffering from cancer and undergoing treatment but He was the happiest and most satisfied person I came across. Even before his illness, he never had too much but He knew He was living according to God’s will and was an amazing example of faith to everyone he met.
Sadly, we lost him just before Christmas 2019 but we know that heaven has got his man back and even though, physically he isn’t with us anymore, he’ll keep inspiring thousands of people for years to come.
Another example is John Kirkby, the founder of another charity – Christians Against Poverty. In his book “Nevertheless”, he writes about his journey of faith and of starting CAP. In the beginning of the book, he talks about experiencing perfect peace despite his very difficult financial situation. He had a family to feed and people to pay wages to but on most of the days he didn’t know where the next pay cheque would come from. Yet, with creditors chasing him for big sums of money, building society threatening him to repossess his house and very little to live on, he speaks of experiencing peace and total assurance that God will provide. This is a good good life which we can only receive from our Good Good Father.
Are you ready?
These are some amazing inspiring examples of people living a good good life but as I wrote earlier, neither me nor them, are extraordinary people. We’re or were living it because we have understood that nothing will satisfy but God. We have also realised that the real good life is God’s concept and only by looking into Him and His word we can learn what it really is and how to live it.
For you, the good good life might look different than it does to me but whatever it is, you will not find it anywhere else than in God.
You will find people who don’t have a relationship with God and still are enjoying their life and might even find it meaningful but I believe that the good good life – joy despite the circumstances, perfect security and acceptance can only be found in Jesus.
What He gives lasts forever. It’s not changed by any circumstances and doesn’t depend on our mood, how much money we’ve got or how beautiful we are. All the other things that seemingly give us good life don’t last and change depending on economic situation, people around us and other factors.
The best is that you can start living this life today. Jesus’ promise in John 10:10 is for EVERYONE. But you need to ask God for it and live it on His terms because He has created it and knows best what it really is.
Will you take up his invitation? Will you let Him transform you and give you the best life ever? Try and see what he can do.
What does the good life mean to you? Share your thoughts in comments.
For inspiring quotes and Bible verses talking about living a good life, check out this post.
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Look ahead
Are you constantly living up to other people’s expectations? Do you feel like you’re trying to please others and compromise being who you really want to be? Then, read this post to find out what’s God’s better solution for you and how I’ve battled this habit in my life.
While driving my car I often look into my rear-view mirror to check if there’s no queue of cars behind me. I’m a cautious driver and I follow the speed limits. That doesn’t make everybody very happy, because I slow them down, at least that’s what I think.
If I see that there’re cars behind me, I blame myself for not driving well (read: fast) enough. As a result, I may adjust my driving – drive a bit faster, even if I’m already driving at the speed limit, or not slow down as much as I would usually do on the next turn, so those behind me can think I’m a confident driver.
I’m putting myself at risk, only to make sure that others are pleased and think well of me. Then I look in the mirror again and… there’s nobody behind me anymore. I was adjusting my driving only to realise that those I’d adjusted it for, aren’t there anymore! They’ve turned somewhere else and went their own way leaving me disappointed and thinking that my effort isn’t appreciated!
Do you behave similarly? Do you want to please others in different situations? Then read on to find out God’s truth about it.
Trying to live to other people’s expectations, only to find out nobody cares? Road to destruction
While on the road it might not have a lasting impact, if I follow the pattern in other areas of my life, and I quite often do, it may become destructive. In different situations, I change my behaviour just a bit and feel unhappy with myself but know that I’ve pleased others. As on the road, in life, they often go their own way unaffected, but I feel dissatisfied and useless.
Constantly adjusting our behaviour to others’ (not even to their expectations but to what we think their expectations are) results in us not being ourselves anymore, and what’s even worse not being who God created us to be. It’ll eventually drain you. If you blame yourself every time you don’t meet people’s expectations, you won’t feel good. You’ll be ridden by guilt. You’ll constantly feel disappointed and you’ll lose the real focus of your life.
Not the best strategy for life, huh?
Tired of living up to other people’s expectations? Be unique
Think for a moment about the reasons behind this behaviour? Do you want others to like you? Want to feel better? Do you have low self-esteem and are trying to prove something?
For me, it’s wanting to please others and feel accepted, feel like I’m one of them. I think that if I do, what I think they want me to do, they’ll like me more and see an interesting person in me. The truth is the opposite – only by being your true self, who God created you be, you’ll attract people.
But still, it’s not about attracting people by being who you are but about pleasing God by being whom He made you to be. If there’s anybody you need to look ‘interesting’ to, it is God.
Relax and be who God made you to be! Being yourself brings God the glory
God created each and one of us in the most unique way possible. There’s no other Joanna. My appearance, experience, skills and other things are absolutely unique and are in me to bring God the glory. They’re here, in this specific time and place, to fulfil the purpose God has for me. And the same applies to you. It seems obvious, but we need to be reminded of it time and time again. Do you know the quote from Oscar Wilde? “Be yourself, everyone else is already taken.” It couldn’t be truer when it comes to God’s vision for our life.
When Jesus entered Jerusalem on, what we now call Palm Sunday, crowds welcomed him. They were cheering him. They loved him. And less than a week later they… crucified him. If Jesus did what pleased people, there wouldn’t be any hope for you and me.
[bctt tweet=”Trying not to live up to other people expectations but be yourself? Read this helpful and inspiring post” username=”goodgoodlifeuk”]
Be like Jesus. Be yourself
Do you know why on the pages of the Bible Jesus sometimes seems rude or unapproachable (is it just me)? Because, while on earth, He was so focused on doing His Father’s will, he didn’t want to be side-tracked. He knew that the task He was given wasn’t an easy one. If he allowed himself to follow people’s feeling and opinions instead of God’s unique plan for him, the humankind would be lost in darkness forever. He was himself. So, one dimension of following Jesus is to be who you’re in God and following His good and perfect will specifically for you.
Obeying God or doing his will isn’t a high thing reserved to those ‘in ministry’. Everybody can obey God’s will daily by listening to His voice and being yourself.
If you know you’re doing what’s right, playing by rules, have a control over the car of your life, don’t look into your rear-view mirror. You’ll only be trying to please people who are no longer there. Your only audience to please is God. He’ll always be with you and wants to get the best out of you, not put pressure on you to fulfil expectations that don’t exist.
[bctt tweet=”Be like #Jesus. Be yourself! It brings God the glory. ” username=”goodgoodlifeuk”]
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N.B. Since I’ve first realised this behaviour in my life, I started making changes. I now force myself not to look into the rear-view mirror while driving. If I know I’m driving to the best of my abilities and according to the rules, that’s enough.
In everyday life, when I look back over the last couple of weeks, I realise that I haven’t been thinking about this too much because instead, I was myself. I was closer to God. Not because of my strong will but because, by God’s Holy Spirit I understand this isn’t the right thing and if replicated in other areas of life, it causes unnecessary pain. I’m pleased and not tempted to look to others to please them instead of pleasing my one and only audience – God.
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About Me
My name is Joanna – I am Polish expat living in the UK with my Ethiopian-born husband and our two little girls – Anna and Eden. My background is in media and journalism, though I now work in business support in charity sector.
I started this blog as part of my personal journey. I wanted to live a life that God had prepared for me, with purpose and satisfaction. Instead, I was dissatisfied in life. I knew that wasn’t what life was meant to be.
Good Good Life 