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The Shape of Your Impact

Every day I hear people wondering out loud if they are effective or having an impact in the world. We can't help but want to leave our mark on the world and impact people in a powerful way.

What you're experiencing right now, what you've experienced in the past, and what you will experience tomorrow shapes you in such a way that you have a unique impact on people. We go through hard times and we go through good times that shape us into the person we are with the personality we have. Some people go through harder things than others and some people grow up in an environment of love and safety. Whatever you're surrounded with, it is shaping you. God uses every single life experience for his victory, your testimony, and for the people that you can reach through your personal experiences.

The key to getting to a place where you can share your experiences with light, love and hope comes from intimacy with God and sustained victory over darkness. Only through God can we share our times of suffering or even our life filled with love with other people to create an impact that changes the world...or one person.

Intimacy with God doesn't come through throwing lofty requests in his direction and hoping he grants your wishes. Intimacy comes from a sustained relationship with him. Think about intimacy with a loved one or a friend. You meet, talk, text, think about each other, make plans, dream about the future, hold hands, hug and grow together in a healthy relationship. A relationship with God is no different...so he doesn't have a cell phone? So what? He has something BETTER than a cell phone...he has direct contact with you through your heart, soul and mind. Seek out a relationship with him and watch your relationship grow through increased contact.

Intimacy with God allows for sustained victory over the darkness you may carry from past situations or current addictions, depression or fears. Living in this world, we often bounce between two realities: a reality tied to the things and opinions of this world and a reality tied to the love and truths of God. The first reality surrounds us with feelings of inadequacy, shame, condemnation and fear but the second, GREATER reality wraps us in God's love, truth, hope and peace. God can take you out of a reality of abuse, addictions and fear and allow you to live in a reality of victory, hope and identity in him. You ARE NOT defined by what has happened to you or what are addicted to or fearful of. You ARE defined by who you are in Christ Jesus. You are a son or daughter in his family with endless possibilities and resources of love and acceptance.

Through the latter reality, your impact in this world on people or one person is greater than you can ever imagine. God wants to use you to bring others out of darkness and to show them where hope comes from. God wants to use victory over darkness to usher in a movement of love so big that it changes the world. That movement starts with you.

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