How Can I Make My Life Work?
We are all trying to make our life work. And while we don’t always know for sure when it’s working, we definitely know when it’s not.
When your life is working, that doesn’t mean everything is perfect. It means you are in a place of peace with God, and you know without a doubt that you are in His hands and He will not desert you, leave you hanging off a cliff, or fail to be with you in challenging, difficult, or tough times. When your life is working, you have a deep and abiding certainty that things are going to work out for good in your future, no matter what is happening today. That means even when something goes wrong, you know you have access to a power that can make it right again. That power only comes from one source—God. And He has certain specifications for tapping into it. When we live according to those specifications—the way He wants us to live—our life works.
We all desire stability and consistency in our lives. It’s not good enough to live by chance or luck. That is too unpredictable. We want to know we can count on having the ability to make right choices. We will never have the peace we desire if our life is not progressing well because we didn’t have the wisdom to make good decisions. We want to be able to avoid doing anything stupid that will bring undesirable consequences. We want to have an ongoing awareness of our purpose and a sense of hope about our future. But where do we get that sense of purpose, hope, peace, wisdom, stability, and consistency? It comes from God. In order to achieve this in our lives, we must connect with God in a deep and powerful way. We cannot
enjoy freedom, wholeness, or true success without this vital connection.
What Is True Success?
You were not created to live in bondage, brokenness, or failure after failure. You have been put here to live a life of God-given power, purpose, and accomplishment. God wants you to live in true freedom, true wholeness, and true success.
True freedom doesn’t mean freedom to do whatever you want. It means being liberated by God from anything that keeps you from doing what He wants. It means being free to become more like the Lord every day so you can live the life He created you to live and become all He created you to be. It means getting free of the restrictions, fears, false beliefs, and negative emotions that keep you from moving in to all God has for you.
True wholeness means having all the brokenness of your life put back together in a lasting way that allows you to become a whole person. It doesn’t mean you are perfect, but rather that the Lord’s perfection can shine in you and work through you—not only for your benefit but also for the benefit of others. When anything in your life is broken, God can mend it and make it like new again. The presence of God’s holiness can make you whole.
True success is the kind of success God has for you. His ways are different from the world’s. Too often when people think of success, they envision being rich and famous. Or being at the top of whatever they do. But true success is not about wealth, fame, and worldly accomplishment. True success is knowing who you are in the Lord and never violating that. It’s trusting that God has a good future for you, no matter how things appear at the moment. I’ve known too many wealthy, famous, and accomplished people who were miserable because they chased after a selfish dream of their own making. I have witnessed the emptiness of a life lived totally for oneself, and there is nothing truly successful about it. That doesn’t
mean wealth, fame, and accomplishments are all bad. If you are doing what God has called you to do and the Lord blesses you with those things, then they are good. And you can enjoy that kind of success as long as you are using part of what God gives you to help others.
True success doesn’t mean you never have problems. It means whenever you go through a difficult time you have a deep sense that God is with you and will bring you out of it or through it successfully. It means you see the hand of God in your life, and you acknowledge His presence and His touch with a grateful heart.
True success means you have an understanding of the ways of God and the heart of God, and you find great pleasure in honoring Him by living according to His laws and His ways.
True success means living in close contact with God throughout each day and finding everything you need in the Lord and from the Lord. It’s having a deep inner peace because you know God is on your side and always there for you. It’s believing God is greater than anything you face and trusting that His power can positively affect every situation that threatens you. It’s knowing in your soul that no matter what problem comes along, God has a solution, a way out, or a way through. It’s unwavering faith that your prayers are heard by God and He will answer—in His way and His time. It’s sensing the love of God in your life and being able to extend it to others in the manner He wants you to. It’s trusting that God has the answer to every question you have, and so you stop obsessing over your questions and start trusting His answers.
True success is becoming who you were made to be—who you really are—and accepting that who you really are is good. This knowledge frees you from having to constantly compare yourself to others and always feeling that you come up short. It liberates you from the tyranny of images and lifestyles depicted on TV and in films, magazines, and books that can make you believe you are failing if you don’t live up to them. Measuring your worth by those standards will turn your world upside down from what it is supposed
to be. God has so much more for you than that.
True freedom, wholeness, and success can only be found when you are living a praying life. A praying life means staying close to God and praying about everything. It means listening to Him speak to your heart and into your life. It’s walking so close to God that He can keep you away from danger and guide you where you need to go.
How Do I Get Close To God?
The way to get close to God and appropriate His power in your life is through prayer. Prayer is the means by which we communicate with God. It is the avenue through which we tell Him our fears, desires, and needs. Prayer is the way we quiet our soul and mind and let God speak to us. It is through prayer that we worship God— giving Him praise for who He is, and telling Him how utterly grateful we are for all He has done for us.
In prayer we intercede for the people and situations around us. In prayer we praise God for all He has done. And we thank Him in advance for all He is doing and will do for us in the future. When we pray, we can sense our relationship with God growing stronger, and we feel our love for Him and our dependency on Him deepening. The more we pray, the more we can see His hand of mercy, grace, and love guiding us daily. The more we pray, the more we realize that we cannot live without Him and His power.
The key here is coming to the realization that we cannot make life work on our own. We need the power of God. We must have the saving, redeeming, delivering, healing touch of the Lord because we need to be saved, redeemed, delivered, and healed. And good luck trying to do any of this on your own. Let me just save you the trouble of learning the hard way that luck isn’t going to do it for you. Your life is not going to have love, peace, joy, fulfillment, power, healing, restoration, and transformation without the Lord. The reason I know this is true is because I have been there and done that. All my attempts to make life work on my own nearly killed me.
I had a childhood of abuse at the hands of a severely mentally ill mother. When I was able to get out on my own, I nearly overdosed on drugs and drank way too much alcohol. I became disillusioned by many wrong relationships and tried to cope with paralyzing fear, anxiety, and depression on a daily basis. Living a cover-up life of laughter on the outside and gut-wrenching emotional pain on the inside, never knowing when disaster would strike, being afraid to go to bed because of what horrible thing could happen in the night, and waking up with dread because I didn’t think I could make it through another day—this is not a life that works, believe me! My life works now because of what God has done and continues to do in me and in my circumstances.
Does this mean my life is perfect and I never have problems? I wish! But the answer is no. I live in the same fallen world you do. I have the same enemy attacking me just as he does everyone else who doesn’t go along with him. I’ve been close to death so many times I have lost track of the number. I have troubles like everyone else. But I have also been saved, rescued, set free, transformed, and made whole. What God has done for me, He will do for you. He is not a respecter of persons. He doesn’t respect me any more than He does you. He has the same love, mercy, peace, grace, power, healing, hope, restoration, redemption, and true success in life for you too. It all happens as you get close to God in prayer.
Knowing What Your True Needs Are
You need to frequently be reminded of who God is and who you are and can be in Him.
You need to take charge of your thoughts and emotions, and seek to be delivered from anything that imprisons or restricts you so you can live in the freedom and wholeness God has for you.
You need to be deeply impressed with the knowledge of all Jesus accomplished on the cross so you are not continually wearing yourself out struggling to make something happen in your life that
has already been accomplished.
You need to always follow the leading of the Holy Spirit so you can know God’s will and be where you are supposed to be, doing what you are supposed to do.
You need to understand, recognize, and receive the gifts God has for you so you are not always striving for what He has already provided.
You need to know God’s rules for life and be able to secure His help in fully obeying them.
You need to be free of guilt and able to maintain a heart of humility and repentance.
You need to receive God’s forgiveness whenever you miss the mark He has for you and be able to extend forgiveness to others when they, too, miss the mark.
You need to have the fear of the Lord in your heart every day so you are in right relationship with Him, and then He will take away all tormenting fear from your life.
You need to be able to see and appreciate your body as the temple of the Holy Spirit so you can learn to care for it properly.
You need to experience God’s love every day and be able to share it with the people He puts in your life.
You need to be free to wholeheartedly give to God and to others in the way He would have you to do.
You need to know God as your Healer and grow in faith that He can bring healing to you and to those for whom you pray.
You need to find breakthrough in your life through the godly discipline of fasting and prayer.
You need the ability to take control of your mind and not be tossed to and fro by lies of the enemy, who always tries to make you believe that his lies are the truth and God’s truth is a lie.
You need to resist negative thoughts and emotions, and stop
believing lies about yourself.
You need to speak words that bring life, and be able to seek the truth in all situations.
You need to move in the power of God and not live an overwhelming life of powerlessness in the face of difficulties.
You need to be rid of destructive relationships that not only don’t add to your life but tear it down.
You need to recognize who your enemy is so that you can resist him and not assist him.
You need to be strong enough to turn away from all temptation to do anything that is not glorifying to God.
You need to learn to pray without ceasing so that you can enjoy emotional peace and contentment.
You need to surrender your life to God and live in a manner deemed holy by Him.
You need to grow in faith and not be tormented or restricted by doubt and instability.
You need to be able to unfailingly stand strong in all you know of God, no matter what is happening.
You need to be the kind of person who never gives up hope, regardless of how hopeless things seem, because your hope is in the Lord.
If you have a desire for any of these things I have mentioned above, then what you need is more of the Lord in your life. This book will help you to find that life- changing closeness with Him. It will steer you toward God and His Word and help you discover more of who He is. I pray that as you read it—perhaps one chapter a day, praying the prayer, implementing the suggestions, and reciting the biblical truths related to the subject at the end of each chapter—within 30 days you will sense that your relationship with the Lord has grown deeper and you will see that God has provided everything you need
in order for your life to progress in a positive way. Don’t feel you have to complete it in 30 days, however. I just know that a lot of you type A’s like to do that. Speed is not what is important. Go at your own pace and spend as much time as you need on each chapter. I have placed some pages for personal notes at the end of the book. If in your reading you come across something God is nudging your heart about, you can use those pages to record your thoughts or prayers.
The following 30 chapters give you 30 ways to pray. I could write a book on each chapter because there is so much to know about every subject, but what I have given you here is still enough to be life changing. Don’t allow the brevity of the chapter to minimize the importance of that subject to your life. If you grasp these 30 ways to pray for your life, you will be living a life of balance, purpose, freedom, wholeness, and true success. You will be living a praying life, a life dedicated to drawing close to God and communing with Him every day—a life that works.
— Stormie Omartian
