August 7, 2020 Are you Buried or Planted?
Congratulations! You've made it through week one of our first socially distanced Bootcamp. This week several people approached me and said after just a few days of exercising, they feel ALIVE again.
"Sometimes when you're in a dark place, you think you've been buried, but you've actually been planted," by Christine Caine Read.
During this crisis I have experienced the highest and lowest points of life, like many of you. What I came to realize is there are opportunities to be found in the challenges we face. Most often, crisis brings the best out in people. I've witnessed strangers reaching out and helping others in need. Just this week, a client brought in over 30 cases of fresh fruit and veggies to give away. We've had many clients who stated their finances were not affected by the crisis and to continue to bill them because they believe in us and wanted to ensure TFC is around when the crisis is over. (This was a humbling and beautiful experience). Our community is digging deep to do what they can to balance the inequities affected by us and amplified by this crisis.
One of the biggest things that has come out of this crisis is my deeper knowing of God. If you didn’t know before, you know now. Who else can shut down an entire world and bring families and communities closer? But God!
God wants you to KNOW that you’ve been planted, but Satan wants you to BELIEVE you’ve been buried. It’s critical that we understand the difference between planting and burying. On the surface, planting and burying look the same; both involve digging into the ground, but here’s the key difference: planting has a future; burial does not. You bury the dead when life is over but when you plant a seed, you place it in the ground, cover it and after a period of transformation it pushes through stronger and greater than it was when it goes underground. When you place a seed in the ground, you aren’t burying it because it's dead, but planting it so that new life may grow.
Satan wants you to believe you’re buried. Buried in guilt. Buried in shame. Buried in regret. And he wants you to remain buried, stuck in the dark. God wants you to know, with constant awareness, that you've been planted. You didn’t grow randomly. You didn’t just arrive on the scene. You were planted! The sperm cell that created you beat out millions of other cells just for the chance to be you! That sperm cell fertilized the egg in your mother’s womb so that you could grow. God planted you in your mother’s womb so that you could grow into the powerful person that He created you to be.
Just because you have experienced darkness in your life or may be in a dark place right now, doesn’t mean that’s your final destination. If you find yourself in a MESS, know that you will grow, change and thrive because you are NO MESS! When you start sprouting, people won’t recognize you because you will have been transformed by the experiences you endured. Most folks can’t deal with being a planted seed, because they are afraid of the dark. A big part of being planted is enduring the darkness as you grow. Regardless of where you find yourself in life, you must constantly remind yourself that you’ve been planted.
I often say, you must trust the process. You will come out of the darkness looking different than when you went in. The key is to be equally as committed to the process as you are to the end result!
Hopefully, after this jumpstart week of fitness, you’ve found some new workouts you enjoy, improved your energy level, and established some healthy habits you can continue for the rest of your life. Most importantly you feel ALIVE again and you're beginning to sprout. No Mess
