**By Becky Castle**

Because God is redemptive and restorative, wanting fullness for us, I believe that no matter what life has dealt or will deal to us, we can choose God to come into those situations and speak the truth instead of the lies we have believed.

As we agree with the truth of God, who is Lord over everything, we can turn away from the lies that this world and the enemy want us to be entrapped by, and we can step into the fullness of Christ in our innermost being. This is freedom! We no longer have to be bound to what others say, what the world says, or what the enemy wants to convince us of, but we can hear from the One True God and trust His Word.

You are about to take a 63-day journey to learn how to hold fast to the Truths of Who God is and who He says you are.

For centuries, sons and daughters have entered into daily disciplines — and this will be much like that. The 63 days were chosen because of Dr. Caroline Leaf's research on neuroplasticity and how it impacts the creation of new brain pathways.

Each day will include both a morning and an evening time of:

You were created to live a life you have yet to live! God's perfect plan from the beginning of creation was for you to enjoy unhindered communion with Him, bringing purpose, joy, love, peace, companionship, and fulfillment through knowing Him and having an ongoing relationship with Him. This is worship.

The reason you long to be loved unconditionally and completely by someone is because you were made for that to be the reality of your life. You were made to wholeheartedly love God in response to His wholehearted love for you.

When God created the earth and filled it with all the living things, it was His intention for mankind to rule over the earth from the place of complete fulfillment because their identity was firmly rooted in His love. God called this good.

Adam and Eve were made in God's image; His nature was their nature. They had open communion with the Creator and with each other.

The realm of God — life in the Spirit — is:

There is no death, no pain, no mourning, and no crying. There is light all around — no darkness is there. There is no sin, no unbelief, no lack, no impurity, no murder, no immorality, no fear, no witchcraft, no evil, no idolatry!

Nothing impure will ever enter in. There is fruitfulness, healing, and eternal life. This is how God intended life with Him to be lived.

God's heart is to have communion with a people who long to co-labor with Him in His nature and ways.

God made mankind in His image and imparted to us the likeness to live in His character, His nature, His life — and then fill the earth, releasing His rule and His reign.

Nothing of the ways of this world is supposed to rule over us or in us. When we are one with Jesus, we should be radiating the glory and the beauty of God everywhere we go.

We're not created to be orphans, doing life on our own. We are not just wounded people. We are to be the children of God, lovers of God, one with Him.

That means the core need on the inside of every human's heart to be loved unconditionally was created by God, for God, and from God. God put within us that deep need for communion with Him because that is His deepest desire.

That's why He made us, and so if we're made in His likeness and His image, then we are compelled to love, just like God.

Look for an opportunity today to co-labor with God and experience His love in a fresh way.

We long to know the truth about how to access a life of fulfillment, but left to our human nature, we try to find that truth and power in ways that will never give life.

In **Romans 1:21–23, 25**, the Apostle Paul tells us why:

When God made mankind, they enjoyed seamless intimacy with the God of the universe. In the Garden of Eden, however, Adam and Eve chose not to honor God and began to worship the "creature." Even though they knew God, they did not honor Him. They broke communion with Him. That's bizarre to even imagine, isn't it? They were able to experience life with God face-to-face with no disruption, yet they stopped honoring Him as God when they began to listen to and yield to the enemy. It says, "they exchanged the truth of God for a lie" (Romans 1:25). This is all of mankind; before the truth of salvation is revealed to us, we are all worshiping and serving the creature, and we have all exchanged God's truth for a lie. Mankind stopped honoring Him and became futile in their speculations.

What does futility mean? It means pointless or useless. When we depend on our way of thinking and our understanding of life apart from God, it's useless. These ways of independence are rooted in humanity's limited understanding, called speculations. Our speculations are not true and life-giving understanding, and to live our lives is useless because we cannot produce life-giving good apart from Him.

We are looking for truth — the truth about how to live a life of fullness. But apart from God we define truth by our own existence, making up our own rules for how life should be lived. Living without connecting and yielding to God is what His Word says has no power, since He's the One who created true life. Think about how many man-made solutions we come up with for man-made problems, which only produce more problems. Living apart from God is useless — futile — and brings darkness to our hearts. It may be using strong language, but this is what the Word of God says!

When Adam and Eve chose not to honor God, they actually made a choice to stop worshipping Him and began to worship themselves. The word *worship* doesn't just mean you go to church on Sunday, sing some songs, and then check the box that you've completed it. To worship something means to devote yourself to that which has your attention and affection. To worship God means that we abandon our own understanding, yielding our affection, our own way of living, our lives, our entire selves and affection, yielding to Him as the Truth. This Exchange message is ultimately about making the choice to yield to God.

God is the only One worthy of our worship. He is the only Righteous One who created us and redeemed us because He loves us so! He created us to be in communion with Him and through that communion, His beauty would be expressed to a family He desires to share it with. He designed the way the world would work according to His nature.

To not align with His design through giving ourselves to Him is foolishness since He made us in His image and knows what He designed us for. Fullness for us comes through receiving the Creator's purpose and living it in the highest way. It comes down to this: Who are you going to worship? Are you going to worship God or are you going to worship yourself, which, ultimately, is the enemy, satan. Choosing to live independently from God is what the serpent convinced Eve to do, and Eve convinced Adam.

If I could boil down the entire gospel, it comes down to that. There's the devil and there's God, and One deserves worship and one does not but is always trying to get us to elevate ourselves above Him. In the garden, Adam and Eve desired their own understanding to be above God. The moment they decided this, they separated from God. That's what the enemy wants to do to us all the time — to cause us to doubt God's goodness.

If we allow that voice to lie to us about God, then we elevate our own understanding above trusting God and we position ourselves as God. It is critical that we watch over our hearts! Worshipping or honoring, and trusting God keeps us rightly positioned for fulfilling the call of God in our lives… that is having the fear of the Lord!

Find a way today to give God your attention and affection.

So where is the power for living a life of fulfillment? How do we gain restoration to the communion mankind once had with God? Let's look at what **Romans 1:16–17** says:

Paul tells us in this verse that he is not ashamed of the gospel because the good news of Christ is so powerful to redeem what we lost. The power to access life that we have been seeking in our own understanding is found only in laying down everything to be with God. God's redemption of mankind and your personal salvation go so much further than just a one-time event that saves your soul from hell. As incredibly powerful as that is, God's redemption covers all of your life from beginning to end. His redemptive power is enough to free you in every way, here and now, and to free you from the past as well.

The act of saving or being saved from sin, error, or evil; the act of regaining or gaining possession of something in exchange for payment; or clearing a debt.

Redemption is our ransom being paid in full; the total riddance, deliverance, and freedom from the bondage we were doomed to live. Christ recovered ownership of us through the state of sin and consequences of sin. He legally paid for our debt and purchased us back from our state of sin and consequences of sin. Any area of our life He has access through (through God's empowerment) accuser can be reclaimed.

Salvation means a daily fullness of provision, power, healing, deliverance, and rich companionship with the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. You've entered into a covenant relationship with God Himself. All that God is, is promised to us in salvation.

Before Paul's conversion, he had the truth. He was a well-respected leader among the Jews. Paul is a guy who had everything going for him in the natural world (**Phil 3:5–6**). Then, on the road to Damascus, he had an encounter with Jesus Christ. He knew he'd just been delivered from what he thought was life, but it had no power. It didn't bring the knowing of God's love, which was life-changing. For Paul to say he is not ashamed of the gospel and that it is the good news that delivered him shows just how life-changing salvation was for him. He's not ashamed to have no power in himself to bring life or good which was contrary to his former way of living when he tried to fulfill the law. He admitted that only Christ has power to redeem and restore.

Talk to God about reclaiming something that has been lost in your life.

(form / journal lines — same five-question pattern as Day 1 and Day 2)

#### THE POWER FOR SALVATION

The first time I really sat with **Romans 1:16–17**, I found it overwhelming because it was the answer to the foundational question I'd been asking since I was a teenager: *Where is the power?* That was the question that started my search for a deeper understanding. This verse in Romans gives the answer. **The power is in the gospel.**

The purpose of the gospel isn't just to save us from our sin, but to restore life with God as He originally designed for us to have (**John 14:6**). The purpose is for us to *know* God. We want His righteousness to flow through us as we make choices every day. We are designed to always respond and relate to Him, dependent on His nature, His attributes, His power. He loved us so much He gave His own life so that we could know Him and be with Him where He is (**John 3:16**).

It is in the gospel that God's goodness, character, faithfulness, and ability are revealed. The word *revealed* means the veil has been pulled back. When you meet God, the Spirit pulls back the veil of your understanding about life and then revelation comes into your being.

That's what Paul meant when he referenced his encounter with God in his letter to the Corinthians. He said that when he met God on the road to Damascus, the veil was pulled off him. He said he was blind, but now he could see. Where he was dull, now he was alive (**2 Corinthians 3:12–18**).

**The fullness of the Good News is this: truly knowing (gaining revelation of) God through His Word is what sets us free.**

We are looking for truth in many ways. If we're walking around our lives believing lies instead of the truth of God, we will have a hard time accessing His goodness. If we're already full of ourselves and our own understanding, then there's no room for the fullness of God. We can't overcome this world if we don't have faith that God is with us and *for us* in every circumstance.

God, through Christ, made a way for us to be restored to His original purpose in creating mankind. He so desires to have a family He could commune with. The highest and best life a person could have is to fulfill the purpose they were created for through worshipping the one true God. We were created to be known and loved to the fullest extent and to love the Greatest One to our fullest capacity with no fear of shame. Christ made this possible!

We were made to glorify God. We cannot function apart from Him and expect life to come forth.

Ask God to reveal Himself to you in a tangible way.

Paul also writes about this in **Colossians 2:9–10**: *"For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form, and in Him you have been made complete, and He is the head over every ruler and authority…"*

The fullness of God is in Christ. And if you have yielded to Christ the Savior, you become one with God through Christ. All of God is in Christ, who is in you, and our part is to yield to Christ within us.

The way we are filled up to all the fullness is by knowing the love of Christ. This is the starting place. The transformation begins when we receive the love God is offering us. When we receive the love of God and our new position in Him, His fullness begins to fill us and spill out into our lives. Again, this isn't just a single transaction we make with God — receiving His love. We receive His love for us in every circumstance for every issue, trusting Him to redeem us and meet our needs.

But this can't happen if we have accepted lies, living from our own ideas or agendas about how we think life should go. There won't be room for us to be filled up with Christ's love. We have to deal with those issues first.

So, how do you get filled up with the love and knowledge of Christ, exchanging your understanding for His? Sometimes it helps to see a picture of how this process works. Imagine the whole of your life on a timeline. You've had all kinds of experiences and beliefs. An experience as simple as a rude or dismissive comment someone said to you in second grade can have a major influence in your life. Something someone said to you can be as intense as being sexually abused or orphaned or experiencing a traumatic death. God has something to say about all of it, no matter how big or small.

We can call these experiences points of pain or places of lack (represented in the diagram with an X).

We build our beliefs around what happened to us in those experiences. Our beliefs are a mixture of our (broken) response to our life experiences and the systems around us — family values, the society we grew up in, authority figures who have influenced us. Beliefs can also come from our own personality, but remember, it's your fallen personality. The root of it is: *I am going to do whatever it takes for me to be okay.*

This belief that it is up to you is the root of our humanity without God. *I'm going to do whatever I have to do to be okay,* even if that means *"I have to punch you in the nose or elevate myself so I look like a good person, a person who wants to bless others and be a good Christian."* The motivation behind these actions is about what I think I need to do to be okay. We can develop a posture of *"this is coping — just making it through, trying to survive."* The capacity for these coping strategies is in us from the time we're born, and the beliefs and behaviors develop over time.

Throughout our lives we've stored within us thousands of experiences, often not knowing what's going to trigger something in us or how we'll cope. All along the way, we each have God's embedded blueprint of needing deep communion with Him, so we start to feel frustrated, sad, hopeless, lonely, bumping into our lack over and over. At some point, our coping skills are exhausted, stop benefiting us, and our triggers stop us from being able to move through life. We call that a *"stuck place."*

Talk to God about an area of your life that you need His love to fill.