Our journey in God is gloriously never-ending, and there is always more to explore. Every step has a lesson to learn, and opportunities to express our love for the One who brought us safe thus far.

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Most of our entrepreneurial and creative journeys are going to be defined by significant milestones, but in reality it’s the smallest steps that take place, not between those milestones that really provide the fuel to move between them. Sometimes we can be looking at the mountain peaks, but the majority of our journey is spent in the day to day habits and the day to day implementation of what we are learning. That is what actually builds a life, not just a moment in life. That’s really where the substance of creativity is spent. And so I guess what I want to encourage today is that we don’t allow kind of high and lofty goals to blind our eyes to the daily wonder of just walking with God in simplicity and the small wins that we get to celebrate each day. As we’ve seen from our walk through Genesis 26 and Isaac’s journey to Beersheba and beyond Beersheba, even the pathway to purpose was one marked by many highs and lows. A lot of challenges were faced along the way. And whether those challenges for you are external or internal, or for most of us, as it usually is a mix of the two, there’s a lot to be said for learning to celebrate in all of those places, whether you’re walking through the Valley or whether we’re kind of taking in the view from the mountaintop.

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If we live in the extremes, if we live for and we live in the extremes, the lows will often just knock us out of the game. Or the highs that come when we do see our breakthroughs will so overshadow everyday victories that we spend most of our time longing for something in the future. Rather than learning to celebrate and savour the moment in which we’re presently living, most of us will have heard the saying Attitude determines altitude, and there is truth in that saying, but I think it should come with a caveat. The higher you fly, the thinner the air. Success comes with its own array of challenges. Unless a character has been built to breathe in a rarefied atmosphere, we could well faint and come tumbling back down to Earth if we’re not careful. You know, failure is not the right word. As much as the challenges can put us in a position where we might be tempted to compromise, success comes with its own set and criteria of character building challenges and questions too. And so it’s probably wise for us not to rush there. Even though we may feel as though we want to kind of leap over the mountains, bypass the challenges, it may be in our best interest that God allows us to develop patience alongside our faith.

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Always reaching for bigger, better and more is a disease of our culture, a culture that seems to have forgotten sometimes the meaning of enough. Perhaps a better pause for thought than attitude determines altitude would be. Gratitude determines attitude. Gratitude demands that we recognise not just the big wins. If that were the case, that gratitude muscle may be exercised very rarely. A lifestyle is lived moment by moment. And being able to see God’s Grace right where you are is a treasured skill that will really affect and fuel your next steps forward. And the ones after that and the ones after that. For certain, the way is not always going to be easy. We’ve seen that in a kind of exposition of Genesis, chapter 26. You’ll be flanked by opportunities to give up your steps will sometimes be hampered by disappointments and questions. Now, being able to exercise gratitude in those moments often becomes the lens through which your destination stays squarely in view, even when it’s clouded, even when the terrain is rough. And we’re told that Jesus endured the cross because of a joy that was set before him. And daily remembering the Grace that you’ve received and the favour that you experience frames how you perceive the portion that you’re enjoying now or indeed, enduring praise and Thanksgiving lift us up above circumstances and afford us a long view beyond the obstacles.

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I remember one time praying and the Holy Ghost was speaking to me about worship and the place and the power of worship and how songs can take us up into what many people refer to as the heavens, the heavenly realms. How God, in the same way as God said to the Apostle John, Come up here, worship lifts us up. It’s a bit like the picture that I saw was what do you call it? A tourist attraction here in the UK, in London called the London Eye. It’s a big kind of Ferris wheel that you climb on and it slowly goes round and it takes you way up in the air as it goes round. And you can look over London when you look down. And everything that looked so big just moments before now looks very, very small. And worship, I think, is like that. Obstacles can stand in our way and tower over us like those great buildings on the London Embankment. But when we climb into God’s great Ferris wheel, when we climb into and get a God’s eye view of things, not a London’s Eye view of things, but a God’s eye view of things were carried up and we can see things from a different perspective.

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And I think that thankfulness and praise and worship are so much a part of that perspective. Stay thankful, count your blessings. Don’t let the devil diminish your worth because you’ve not seemingly or supposedly arrived yet, because really the journey itself is our destination. It’s not like when we arrive somewhere, when we get to a certain point or a certain income or this certain audience or this certain level of influence or impact that we’ve made it, there’s always more in God that he would bring us into. And so don’t allow your self worth to be measured by your net worth when your milestone moments arrive you have developed that thankful muscle to celebrate the big and small alike and gratitude well exercised will have built character enough in you to carry success just as you’ve learned to carry the challenges and kind of the failing forward as you’ve made your way to that place. Neither of them both failure or success will determine your identity because you know that every breath that you breathe is a gift from heaven and every step from the smallest tiniest step to the greatest leap is actually worthy of celebration.

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Milestone moments are absolutely magnificent. I mean that’s just a fact. We look for them, we relish them, we enjoy them, we celebrate them. But even they do not define you. One peak when we reach this peak that we’ve been stretching towards often what happens is as we come over the peak it just allows us to see the rest of the mountain range that still lies before us. As I say, this is not an arrival. An end of one stretch of the journey may often just be the beginning of the next. Our journey in God is gloriously never ending. There’s always more to explore. Every step has a lesson to learn or lessons and opportunities to express our love and our gratitude to the one who has brought us safe thus far.

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Thanks for listening to today’s episode. Hopefully it was a blessing to you. If it was do please consider leaving a rating and a review on whatever platform you are listening on. I also would love to encourage you to cheque out my new book Faithful creative. We’ve got a package of resources designed specifically to encourage you in your Christian creative call.

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You can cheque that out at faithfulcreativebook.com and if you choose to pick it up, use the Promo Code podcast for 50% off so you’ll get it for half price. Have a great rest of your day and God bless Jesus first everything else follows.