I wrote this on Wednesday, so it's a few days old, but the truth of it remains. The truth of God always remains.
God ALWAYS comes through.
I've been feeling pretty helpless recently, for a lot of reasons that I won't get into. But this morning, I was just struggling with it again, and praying for help.
I was reading Psalm 70, and praying especially this verse.
“But I am poor and needy; Make haste to me, O God! You are my help and my deliverer; O LORD, do not delay.” (Psalms 70:5)
I have a few things planned for later today, but I anticipate them being a little bit trying, rather than uplifting. I thought about confiding in someone my troubles, but who? And what could they even do?
Then suddenly, I received a text, from a dear, dear friend. We've been through a lot together, and we have often confided in each other when we needed strength, I trust her.
"Maybe," I thought, "she received some divine inspiration to pray for me, or ask how I'm doing."
But no. Her text was a request for prayer. She was having a rough time too.
My first reaction was sadness, self-pity, I guess, that she was not strong enough for me to lean on. My next that I was not the right person to ask, as I had no strength of my own. But something hit me just then, I realized that I was in the perfect position to pray for her.
As someone who was as weak as she was, we could look together for help from the One whose strength never runs out. Verses suddenly came to mind,
“And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.” (II Corinthians 12:9)
“Proclaim this among the nations: “Prepare for war! Wake up the mighty men, Let all the men of war draw near, Let them come up. Beat your plowshares into swords And your pruning hooks into spears; Let the weak say, ‘I am strong.’ " (Joel 3:9-10)
The two of us united in prayer, with the Holy Spirit among us, are the strongest possible team, because in our weakness, Christ is strong.
In all the ways I anticipated Him to answer my prayer for encouragement, I never expected it to be through someone who in themselves, could not encourage me. But this is the power of God.
Showing posts with label power. Show all posts
Showing posts with label power. Show all posts
Saturday, May 20, 2017
Tuesday, February 10, 2015
Holy and Empowered
Just a quick note before I begin, I mentioned in my last post that I am gearing up for a big one. I still am, and this is not it. This is something I wrote a little while ago and forgot about, so I am going to post this in the meantime as well. Hope you enjoy it. :)
This is a pretty easy part to skip over if you are reading through quickly. For me anyway.
It's the kind of verse that you see over and over again in the Psalms, with words like the Lord, glory, holiness, worship, beauty... You get the general idea of God being holy and deserving of your worship, and you should worship Him.
Okay, next part.
But if you took a moment to look closely at those words, to read them for all of what they mean, you would find much more.
Let's take it little by little.
Give unto the Lord, O you mighty ones.
Okay, ignoring the "Give unto the Lord," for a second, who are the mighty ones?
Without verbalizing the thought in my head, I had told myself, I am not a mighty one. He is talking about someone else.
But really, who else could he be talking about?
It is the bible. If you have ever read the bible, you should know that he would not be calling people mighty because of how physically strong or powerful they are. So, since that outrules physical might, who are the ones who are spiritually mighty?
The answer to this of course is God's soldiers. The "More than Conquerors," the ones who have been given the power of the Holy Spirit and the armor of God...
Us.
Me, my fellow Christians.
We are the mighty ones.
Give unto the Lord glory and strength.
This is where we pick up our "Give unto the Lord," that we had put aside a moment ago.
How do you do that??
I know how you can give God money, praise, even glory, but...strength?
After giving that one some thought, I decided that it must mean that you give Him strength in the same way that you "Give Him your best."
He gives us things to do, He gives us a life to live and a battle to fight, in which we are More than Conquerors and Mighty Ones.
In all of this He gives us strength which we can use, or not. In using the strength He has given us to bring Him glory, we are giving Him strength and glory.
This only emphasizes how much more we ought to give Him!
Look at your life, are you living it in the strength that He has given you to live it? I am not. But He is so worthy of it! He is worthy of every second we have and every ounce of strength we have, the glory due His name is IMMENSE.
Read on, through the chapter. It goes on about how glorious He is, and if you realize that the chapter does not capture a smidgen of who He is... You will realize that He is so worthy of glory.
Whose holiness is this?
If you just read the these verses like I mentioned at the beginning, you would automatically think, "God's holiness, of course."
But it has just talked about giving God more, giving Him all we have because we are mighty in Him. We are set apart in Him. We are holy.
We are holy and empowered.
I am going to try to put this next part into words, because it is the best part of my whole study today, but I don't know how good of a job I will do.
What these two verses said to me today, as you may have picked up, were that there is more empowerment given to me than I am using to bring glory to God.
The last line closes it with a perfect wrap up.
The holiness that we have is beautiful, because it is light, and love, and glory and STRENGTH.
Don't just live your life without using the strength God has given to you, or when you worship, you will worship with the mindset of weakness.
But if you live in the fulness of the empowerment you have been given, your worship will be in the BEAUTY of holiness.
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