Have you ever realized that God just doesn’t fit well into your life? You can’t find enough time to study the Bible or pray. Jesus’ teachings like loving enemies or not worrying about money don’t seem to have a practical application. Your friends and environment seem totally contrary to what’s in the Bible. You pray for God to help you with you’re every day problems but the prayers seem to go unanswered. You are trying hard to incorporate God into your daily life but it is a constant struggle. Often we try to include God in our lives to no avail. We fail repeatedly. Why is it so hard to fit God into our life?

The problem is that God is too big to fit into our life. Our life must fit into God. Many of us have tried to continue the life that we have determined to live with just minor adjustments to accommodate God. This will always fail. When we embrace Christ as our savior we die to our old life and begin a new life in His kingdom. 2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come. Trying to continue our old path with just some adjustments is like digging up a corpse and putting new clothes on it. It still smells.

God doesn’t save us because He needs a good accountant, fireman or athlete. He doesn’t bring us into His kingdom because He needs our position, influence or money. Sometimes we forget He’s God. He can speak anything He wants into existence. We must be ready to lay down our lives and become what God wants us to be. We must be willing to live the way He determines for us. Consider Peter, Andrew, James and John. Jesus finds them busy making a living fishing. He tells them to drop everything and follow Him, leaving behind the life they knew. Matthew 4:18-22 As He was walking along the Sea of Galilee, He saw two brothers, Simon, who was called Peter, and his brother Andrew. They were casting a net into the sea, since they were fishermen. “Follow Me,” He told them, “and I will make you fish for people!” Immediately they left their nets and followed Him. Going on from there, He saw two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee, and his brother John. They were in a boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and He called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father and followed Him. God may allow us to continue to use the talents and abilities we have developed or He may chose to take us in a completely different direction and challenge us to move into areas where we are completely reliant on Him to succeed. He may use us where we have lived all our life or send us to the other side of the planet. In any case we must begin a new life, not adjust an old one.

If we are expecting to add Jesus to our lives and have everything get better, we will be very disappointed. Jesus isn’t a life additive. He is life itself. He is the very focal point of our new life. Every activity that we do is to serve His purpose. He is never going to serve our purposes. We must determine His will in our lives and make the appropriate changes. If God doesn’t fit well into your life, you probably need to quit it and start a new one.

All scriptures are from the Holman Christian Standard Bible.