Discern Your Season
(part 2)
by Drenda Keesee
What are you doing with this season and with the time you have? Each season has definite and important requirements that lay a foundation for the success of the next one.
So how can you best invest your time and energy? Here are some additional ideas on how to help you do so wisely…
3. Identify with God’s Love for You and Others
You are loved, accepted, and pleasing to God, and if you’re confident in that, any giving you do for others should flow from your identity solidly rooted in Christ. That said, one of the greatest blessings in life is to give, and it truly is more blessed to give than to receive. Not only does God reward us, but we can also find deep satisfaction in knowing that He led us to do so.
If you give out of obligation or necessity, it can be a drain, wear you down, and create resentment. Let your giving be done out of security in your identity in Him, and let it be by His Spirit, and of course, done with joy! God loves when we give cheerfully.
Let your giving be motivated by love. The Word of God says that we are to love one another and that it will bring us joy. Joy is an inner force that comes from God’s Spirit. It emanates out of receiving love—real love from God—and then giving it away to others. As we love Him first, He’ll teach us how to love others (and love ourselves) from His vantage point. Only good things come from seeing ourselves, our relationships, and others the way God does. As we do, we can give to others from what we have. Loving others brings joy! But living to please others, and giving to gain acceptance, love, personal gain, or approval from others makes giving a weight. Instead, we must live in the freedom of giving from God’s river of love.
Forgive quickly. Love doesn’t keep a record of wrongs. It just keeps loving because of the overflow of love from God. Someone’s deficit of love can’t rob you of your love reservoir if you have an overflowing source from God. Now, that doesn’t mean you don’t hold them accountable for their decisions or apply consequences when necessary. But you don’t have to become bitter if they choose to wrong you in some way. Instead, feel bad for them because you know they will reap what they have sown.
4. Prioritize
Every demand doesn’t have the same priority. As you begin each new season, pray and ask God to help you honor Him first, then your spouse, your children, your provision or vocation, and then your ministry to family, friends, and others.
For each of us to be our best, we must care for ourselves, too! You can’t give out of an empty vessel. Value others and yourself, because God does.
~Drenda
ps…Are you looking for a good church? Be sure and listen on Saturday evening or catch the 3 services on Sunday for Faith Life Church!
Drenda Keesee’s contagious zeal and humorous personal experiences help make her ministry of spiritual, emotional, and relational wholeness one that will bless your life and spark a new fire in your spirit.
A wife of over 30 years and a mother of five children, Drenda has ministered at churches, seminars, and conferences, and through the mediums of television and radio, for more than 20 years.
Her books, The New Vintage Family, Better Than You Think, and She Gets It are available wherever books are sold. In these heartfelt books, Drenda shares her personal journey and the life lessons that have brought her to where she is today, as well as practical answers that all people need to live a joyful life.
Drenda and her husband Gary founded Faith Life Now, a ministry designed to spread the message of freedom in the areas of finances, faith, marriage, and family. Tune in for their weekly messages here. Faith Life Now hosts conferences worldwide and sponsors both Fixing the Money Thing, which Drenda co-hosts with her husband Gary and Drenda.
Through their own life experiences, the Keesee’s have found the principles from God’s Word to be powerful and effective. At one point, Drenda was a young, suicidal feminist with no hope of ever being “good enough” for her own standards of perfection. She never wanted the “inconvenience” of a husband or children, and she was on her own path to success. But the stress of trying to achieve perfection and perform for love left her broken and used. She had success, but it was nothing compared to the pain and loneliness it had also brought.
That’s when God got a hold of her heart. It was there—at her lowest point—that she found the One who accepted and loved her, faults and all. Since that transformation, Drenda has had a passion to reach women who find themselves where she once was.
She married Gary after attending college, and there she found herself in a personal boot camp of sorts. She says, “I cried and told God, ‘I can do anything but be a wife and mother.’” She committed to learning how to do it God’s way. Through the many years of raising their children and struggling to make ends meet, Drenda learned from their mistakes. “I didn’t know how to be a wife and mother, but God saved our marriage, taught us how to parent our children for success, showed us how to have financial success, and then the irony of all ironies, He called us to ministry.” It’s truly because of these life experiences that Drenda can now share so many insightful principles for people who are now going through the same struggles.
