A Life that Lasts

Over the last week, we've been reading Days 1-7 of The Undiluted Word: 30 Days of Spiritual Nourishment. The key thought that comes to mind is what it really means to build a life rooted in God. 

This episode is a reflection on lessons from the first week of the devotional journey: foundation, obedience, brokenness, and the danger of trading what truly matters for temporary comfort. 

What are you building your life on? 

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Stay blessed x

Transcript

Day 1: Firm Foundation

Day 2: Divine Interruptions

Day 3: Light through the cracks

Day 4: Thriving, Not Surviving

Day 5: Be Still or Go?

Day 6 : Don't Trade It

Conclusion

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Hello, hello everyone. My name is Dara, and you are listening to the Undiluted Word podcast. It has been so long, like way too long, and that feels even weird saying the whole introduction, but I am back and hopefully better. So let's get straight into it. Have you ever realized that sometimes the biggest things we lose in life aren't taken from us? We trade them. Now, where is this all coming from? If you do not know, um let's just give a quick life update. Last year in 2025, on the 29th of March, I published a devotional, thank God, and that devotional is a 30-day plan book, whatever you want to call it, that explores some different themes and topics that are supposed to help us enrich our walk with God. And this year to mark and kind of remember the launch of that devotional, I have decided to do a 30-day journey in this month of April with a group of people in a WhatsApp group chat just for us to go through these topics in a bit more detail and kind of reflect on the words of the devotional and see what God is truly saying to us. So we've literally just finished the first week, and it's so interesting actually going through these topics again myself because it's been a while since I wrote them, and um going through it again with a fresh pair of eyes, insights, and asking the Holy Spirit to then guide me again is so interesting, and it's been amazing also hearing different people's thoughts and their interpretation of the word. So um I've entitled this episode A Life That Lasts. The reason for this is that I believe a lot of the topics and things that were highlighted in this kind of help us know the building blocks that we need to have in place in terms of having this life that is not just for now, but a life that looks um forward to eternity and how we will spend that with God. Um yeah, so let's just dive straight into it. We start off with going through firm foundation, and as young people, we hear the story of the wise man and the foolish man and how one built their house on a rock and how the other built their house on sand. But realistically, what does this mean for us in terms of our day-to-day lives? How can we practically build on the rock, the rock being Jesus Christ? So I want to share with you what I think is the blueprint in terms of building on this rock. Um, the first thing I would say that is very important is having that personal relationship with Jesus. Um I'm very I feel very, very strongly about the fact that we can't expect other people's relationship with Jesus to like be like, we can't just leech off other people's relationship with Jesus. We need to have our own personal relationship with him. The same way we can see how someone that has a close walk with Jesus is very fruitful in their endeavors. We can't just like tap into that and expect it to just happen to us by admiring that. We need to also then develop that relationship with God ourselves. Um, this involves committing to the word of God, reading your Bible as often as you can. Um, really intentionally actually making that space to be with God, to be in communion with Him. The next thing I'd say is to develop a prayer life. A prayer life helps us in terms of our communication with God. Um, the Bible countless of times tells us that we should pray without seizing. Um, if you need anything, ask God. That whole communication with God is so important because we can't claim that we have a relationship with someone and we don't speak to them. If I had my friends and they weren't talking to me, I'd think there was something off. I'd think we'd literally were beefing. So with God, it's the same thing. With Jesus, it's the same thing. We need to keep that line of communication open so that we're not only just speaking to him, but we're also allowing ourselves to actually hear back from him. The next thing that I think is very important in terms of um practically building on the rock is go to church. I think a lot of people think that I understand there's a lot of like issues with churches sometimes. There's a lot of church hurt or this uncle said this, this auntie said this, I don't want to be in that space, it's not it's not healthy, this, that, and the other. Okay, fair enough. That church may not be healthy in that specific moment of time or may not be benefiting you in the same way you think you need to benefit from it. Find another church. There are so many churches in this in the world today, even as we know it, um, that we we're gonna let one experience in one place stop us from having this fellowship with other believers. And I think fellowship with other believers is so important because it helps you um listen to other people's testimonies, it helps you also have a sense of how God is working in other people's lives, it gives you um something to look forward to as well, just having other like-minded people to be around. Majority of my friends are people that I have met either through church or maybe we've been at university and we've done um things together in the community. Um, we have enriched our lives by being in this um community, being with like-minded people, and I think it's so important to have this um because they can challenge you, and you can also challenge them, and you gain so much by being in these spaces. So attending a local church is very important. And the last thing I would say is very important in terms of building on the rock is also serving others. When Jesus came, he served, he didn't he came, and you think, Oh wow, yeah, Jesus Jesus, he's the Messiah, he's gonna just rule everyone. No, he came and he served, he came to be an example to show us how to also um move forward and how to also do things in the future, and this involves serving others. Um, it's all good knowing what to do, how to do it, but without serving, there's a lot of like serving unlocks so many more blessings that God can give us. It may feel as though you're not reaping the benefits of it now, but when we're in heaven and we receive our crown, um, it will be evident and it will be truly worthwhile then. And God will literally say to us, Well done, my good and faithful servant. So this is just an encouragement for us all in terms of building these um habits that enable us to build on the rock. And some other points that I think were shared in the group with regards to practically building um on the rock, was that it's a process, it's an ongoing thing, and it's something we have to intentionally put our minds to do. Um, I think what was also mentioned that it's um also knowing that if we fail, if we somehow slip into old patterns or maybe start building on a very rocky patch or very sandy ground, I think we then have to kind of retrace our steps back to Jesus, back to God, and know that He would, He's willing to kind of like take us back and never feel as though we've gone too far down the wrong path to then not be able to change back. So wherever you are in terms of building on that rock, I think now is a time um to listen, um, tap in, clock it, whatever it is that you want to do in terms of just building on the rock, which is an impenetrable, it's a solid ground, um, it's not sinking sand, it's something that will last and something that will guide you through um whatever life throws our way. Um, yeah. So I thought that was very interesting in terms of our foundation. Now, interruptions. No one likes being interrupted. I mean, like, if I'm talking and I've really passionate trying to say something and I get interrupted, I'm just like, ugh, come on now. And sometimes that's how it exactly how it feels when I'm planning, I've got my like plan in place in terms of where I want to go to to go and study, where I want to go to to I don't know, complete my training pathway for medicine and to become a GP. And then you get interrupted, God just steps in and says, No, this is what I want instead. And when that happens, I'm sorry, it's sometimes not nice, it's not pleasant. Um, and it can sometimes take us aback. I have a friend who has a testimony about that. Um, it kind of happened like last year, I'm sure. Hopefully, she doesn't feel um she won't feel the type of away with me sharing this. But my friend, she's a doctor, and she had been praying to God in terms of where she wanted to go and do her GP training. She had her heart set on a certain area, and um and when the offers came through in terms of where she was going to be, she got somewhere else and completely. And what she said to me was um just just I think so encouraging in terms of when God does interrupt your plans or um your perfectly made plans, and he says, No, I want to send you in this other direction, how we respond to that. She said, I honestly feel that this is the direction God wants me to be in. It would not be an interruption if it was what I wanted, and I believe that it is what God is telling me for this season. And she can't she goes on to say that the place that she has now been placed for her training um actually made more sense than where she was so um focused on being and being placed in. So I think it's just so important um and just a reminder to be so open to God's way of moving and the way he puts things, puts some obstacles. And when he does put those obstacles, do we fight them and say no, we need it to go this way? This is how I planned it, it must be like that, or do we say, Okay, this is an interruption, and I believe it is what God wants for me. And it's happened in instances in my life as well where I've been placed in certain rotations or placements, and I'm like, why have I been placed here? I literally hate it, I don't think I'm gonna gain anything from this, but sometimes it's the place that God wants me to be in. And I found out that at the end of the four-month placement that I've been there, I'm like, oh wow, that was amazing! I wouldn't have been able to get my book written, I wouldn't have been able to do all these other extracurricular things if I'd been placed in another environment. Um, so yeah, divine interruptions, tap into that, allow God to move. Um, even as perfectionists and people who want to have full control, um, let us let us allow God to actually um do things as well in our lives. Um I think what I will say is we should um don't be so rigid in your plans and your structures that God doesn't have a little bit of a wriggle room. Like allow him, allow him some space because one thing about God is that he's so creative and the way he wants to achieve things in our lives can sometimes be snuffed up and kind of um like our own plans can sometimes not allow his plans to thrive. Does that make sense? I hope it does. Um, but yeah, don't be so rigid that God doesn't have enough wriggle room to come through for you and to be creative with his miracles. Next up, do you all know about kinsuki? Kinsugi, I think that's how you say it. Kinsugi is this Japanese um form of art uh um where broken pieces of pottery, clay, all those kind of materials are put back together, kind of um glued back together, and in the cracks they put this gold foil along it, and the end product looks so beautiful, and um I think it just shows you how much beauty can be in brokenness. A lot of the times we may have things that make us feel inadequate, make us feel like we are not worthy. Um, there are things that I'd consider our cracks. Um, maybe it's our need for control, our need for perfection, our need, I don't know, whatever it is that you may feel like is broken within you, or something that kind of hinders you from being as close to God or performing in the way you feel like you need to perform. Um, this whole Japanese tale and culture of Kinsugi literally just lets us know that each pot has a story to tell. You and I all have stories to tell, even in our brokenness, we can still tell a story. God wants us to tell our story, He wants our lives to show this story. A key text that I will say from this is in Matthew 5, verse 16, and in that text it basically talks about the light in our lives, and the fact that the light in our lives, when it shines out, it is ultimately to glorify our Father, it is to point other people get back to God. So our inadequacies, the things that make us feel less than others, aren't shouldn't be seen necessarily in that way. We should see them in ways that God maybe wants us to be able to reach out and kind of give him back the glory. So now, if anyone knows me on social media, you will know that I like to enjoy myself. I like to enjoy life. Um, a term that has been coined is Dara Shop's life. And why do am I so passionate about this in terms of enjoying life? I do not believe that we are supposed to live um just by surviving, getting from day to day, waiting for bank holidays, waiting for um this break and that break, or counting down to holidays. I think God, I don't even think, I believe that God has come, sent his son to die for us so that we can have abundant life. Um, the thief, however, comes to steal, kill, and destroy, and that is not what God has come to do. God, the son, has come so that we can have life in abundance. Um, what does this look like? I think it means that we involve him in all that we do so that in our ordinary day-to-day life we can sense and we can appreciate the abundance that God has to give us. It doesn't mean that every moment is going to be amazing and like 10 out of 10 type of thing, but it does mean that we'll be able to experience more joy and fullness in our lives. Um, and I think one important thing that kind of struck me during our discussion um is that worry can put us in survival mode. The need to, the concern of the future, what the future holds, can put us into this state where we're like surviving, trying to see how we're gonna make it from today to the next day, and so on, so on and so forth. And I think um when we get into that state of worry, it can put us in um this survival state, which is far from what God wants from us, He wants us to be without fear. He says, I have not given you a spirit of fear and anxiety, but of a sound mind of control. Um, and I think those things, when we invite God into our worries, we tell him about our fears, we cast our cares upon him, then we are able to move and switch from living life in a survival mode to moving into this thriving um and flourishing aspect of our lives. Um, so yeah, God wants us, God wants us to live in abundance. Next up, we then talk about stillness, different seasons in our lives expect different reactions from us. Um, there are times when we are to be still, and there are times when we are to go, be active and do something. In Psalms 46, verse 10. We are told to be still and know that I am God, and I've really focused on this text be still and know that I am God. In 2022, I've seen in my Bible um digital Bible, I've literally written this means sit down and shut up, which is just so like no-filter way of saying it. But I think what it means significantly, or what I was even trying to portray at that time, is that stillness involves really just being in God's presence, being so still that we'll be able to hear, we'll be able to feel what he is trying to communicate to us. It allows us to trust in him as well, and that trust comes from knowing God, be still and know God, be still and know that I am God. Without that stillness, I think we struggle to understand who God is, and when we don't know who God is, we have difficulty in terms of trusting him. I wouldn't necessarily trust a stranger because you don't know them, and the same way with God, we need to cultivate a habit of stillness so that we'll be able to know him, trust him, and so bringing this all together it means stillness doesn't mean you're inactive and just shutting up. It means that you are allowing yourself to get to know God, um, allowing yourself to be calm, not be just going at 100 miles per hour all the time. It's just being in God's presence and um having that accepting that invitation to come closer to him, and I pray that God rewards um us as we take time to really be still in his presence. Um now I am so excited about this next part. Um Esau. We all know about Esau. We know Esau is that guy in the Bible that he was just too hungry and because of his hunger, he decided to sell his birthright. Like, who does that? Um, and I know that you read his story and you're just like, what a clown! Like, you literally like, why did you do that for? Um, and we criticize him, we say that was dumb, you shouldn't have done that, like your brother stole um your birthright now, or you sold it, and then Jacob goes and obviously just um steals this birthright from his brother. Um but like I asked at the beginning of this episode, have you ever realized that sometimes the biggest things we lose in life aren't taken from us, we trade them. So this makes us put ourselves in Esau's shoes for a minute. There are things that we have been given, but because perhaps we do not understand the value of them, we trade them for cheap, quick, more um like momentary pleasures, something that we get now, instant gratification for the here and now. And you have in this story Esau selling his birthright just because he was hungry in that moment in time. He needed, he wanted to satisfy his hunger, um, and so sold his birthright. Um, so let's talk a bit about the birthright. Okay, so Ephesians chapter 1, verse 3 to 14 reads, Praise be to God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love, he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ in accordance with his pleasure and will, to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given to us in the one he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins in accordance with the riches of God's grace that he has lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding he made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he purposed in Christ, to be put into effect when the times reached their fulfillment, to bring unity to all things in heaven and on earth under Christ. In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to put our hope in Christ, might be in the praise of his God. Glory and you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of our salvation, when you believed you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit. So why have I shared this text in Ephesians chapter one? We know that in Genesis Esau sold his birthright to Jacob, and this is because Esau thought little of his spiritual heritage in terms of his birthright. He only valued material things, his hunger. So a spiritual birthright meant very little to him, especially in this case when his stomach was hungry. Esau is um an example of those of us who place little value on spiritual things. As I have shared in Ephesians 1, verse 3 to 14, we are also joint heirs with Jesus Christ, meaning he's the firstborn of all creation, yes, but because we are joint heirs, because God has adopted us as one of his, it means that we also have this birthright which is valuable. And the question I have for all of us is that do we consider what God has given us as valuable? Do we place as much value on the spiritual things in the same way he places value on them? Or do we, like Esau, despise our birthright which we've been given through Jesus Christ? Do we neglect it? Um, do we trade it away? There's a quote I've got here by someone called Barnhouse. History shows us that men prefer illusions to realities, choose time rather than eternity, and the pleasures of sin for a season rather than the joys of God forever. Men will read trash rather than the word of God and adhere to a system of priorities that leaves Jesus out of their lives. Multitudes of men spend more time shaving than on their souls, and multitudes of women give more minutes to their makeup than to the life of the eternal spirit. Men still sell their birthrights for a mess of pottage. And I think this is deep. This is speaking to us all. Do we despise our birthright? In Ephesians, we know that there are a lot of riches that belong to us as God's people. So the riches that belong to us as God's people by our birthright in Jesus include spiritual blessing, blessing of being chosen in Jesus, adoption into God's family, complete acceptance by God in Jesus, redemption from our slavery to sin, true and total forgiveness, the riches of God's grace, the revelation and knowledge of the ministry of the revelation and knowledge of the mystery of God's will, an eternal inheritance, the guarantee of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. Too many of us neglect and trade away this birthright that we have been given for cheap entertainment, momentary like pleasures or popularity, whatever it may be, passing pleasures, this instant gratification. Um and I think this is just an appeal to us all once more to truly just seek Jesus' kingdom first above all other all other desires that we may have. I I'm for one as well, I'm I fall into this position. I think this this um really made me think as well in terms of ways, things that I choose to do on a day-to-day basis that show that I am not valuing this birthright that I've been given, this relationship that God wants to have with us, how I am choosing other pleasures, other things, maybe even as harmless as watching one more episode, one more episode, one more episode in the night, and then waking up the next morning so tired, unable to do my Bible study or my personal time. These this just reminds me again of the fact that we need to be intentional about building on the rock, intentional about being still, having that time to have the fullness that God wants to offer to us. Um, so yeah, in terms of building a life that lasts, we truly ought to be intentional about the choices that we make, and um why we're making these choices, I think it's also important. God desires so much from us, and I think we are not fully tapping into the fullness of what he has to offer, um, which is a shame, a real shame indeed. I've enjoyed going through these first seven days of the devotional with those on the um group chat and just going through this devotional again. And for those that you are following but not in the group chat, I still see you, and um, that is okay. If you ever want to join, never feel like you can't. And um, yeah, I'm happy to hear all your insights and um what God is speaking to you and telling you through this devotional as you're going through this journey. If you would like to get a devotional and you don't have one already, it's available to get physical copy on Amazon, or you can also get um a digital version. All the links are on my social media um accounts, the undiluted word underscore. Feel free to send me a message. Um, yeah, and I'll be happy to help out with that. I can put links into the description box below as well. But I pray that as we continue going through these 30 days in the undiluted word devotional, we'll be able to learn more about the life that God wants for us. And I pray that as we've gone through these seven days in terms of building a life that lasts, we will continue to make sure we build a firm foundation on Christ, be still, and allow God to speak to us, and so that we can also tap into the fullness that He has to offer. Um, I pray that we will not be like Esau and trade this birthright, this rich birthright that we have been given for momentary pleasures and instant gratification. I pray that God will truly help us to make these intentional decisions and choices that will lead us closer to Him and having that fullness of life that He has to offer us. Um yes, I cannot wait to continue going through this and speak to you all on the next episode. Have a lovely week and bye bye for now.