The pathway to taking your life back, living a carefree life, includes Paul’s admonition to the church at Corinth. He states in the NLT, of 2 Cor. 13:5, “Examine yourselves to see if your faith is genuine. Test yourselves. Surely you know that Jesus Christ is among you; if not, you have failed the test of genuine faith."

Where there is separation and disconnection, you will find confusion and deception. This includes examining the warehouse of our minds that is cluttered with toxic, negative thoughts and experiences that have been stored for decades dripping and leaking into your day-to-day life. We must examine ourselves.

Many of those toxic negative thoughts and experiences are designed to pull us down in life like quicksand. Living authentically, deciding to take your life back includes identifying those things, those people, those thoughts with the help of the Holy Spirit to eliminate that which holds you back and holds you down.

Therefore, God says in the Message Bible of Romans 12:1-2, “Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.”

Invite a friend or co-worker as we continue to learn to "Think More Like God Thinks," by casting all of our cares upon Him, because He cares for us (1 Peter 5:7).