Philippians 3:11

“that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”

            In the context with the verses preceding this, it is talking about sacrificing all of yourself, being willing to suffer like Christ and become more like Him. When we become a follower of Christ, we leave our dead, old self behind and have new life in Christ. We have to be willing to persevere through all the sufferings and trials the world throws at us for the sake of the gospel, and by doing that, we will attain the resurrection from the dead just as Christ did. The thing about this, it means that we have to give up our wants and desires so that we can learn more and become more like Christ. We may have to give up that extra 30 minutes of sleep or watching that tv show or movie, this isn’t easy for this generation. We can be lazy, we want to do these things, but if the Lord is your top priority, our desire to please Him should be greater. In the morning, we should wake up and make sure that you spend time in the Word, and talking to God. He is the one who refreshes every morning, and He is the one who can change your entire day when it starts with Hi and then stays revolved around those truths He showed you for the rest of the day.

            For me, sleep is very important, I get really low energy throughout the day, so if I haven’t gotten enough sleep then I become a zombie. When I was at home, I would get up at the last minute for school, only leaving time to put clothes on, brush my teeth and grab lunch before having to run out the door. I always told myself that I would do my quiet time later, but then I would say that I had a lot of homework or I wanted to finish a tv show or I just forgot about spending time in the Word. When I would do it, I would quickly skim over my devotional and then continue on throughout my day. Coming to IGNITE and having time to spend in the word every morning before breakfast was really refreshing. I had to get up at 6:30 and breakfast wasn’t until 8 so I had time planned out where I was supposed to do a devotion. As time went on I found myself having more trouble getting up and waking up late on a lot of days. Now, I would still have a bit of time to do my devotion, but I wasn’t focusing on it with my whole heart. The Lord started to show me that I need to make it a big priority in my life to have that time with Him in the morning, and that it can’t just be because someone planned out that time for me. It was great in the beginning so I could start spending time in the word more consistently, but now the Lord is asking me to get up earlier and sacrifice what I want and spend more time reading the Word and getting to know Him more. My application for this last part of training is to get up at 5:30 every morning so that I can spend more time with the Lord.