Tag Archives: strength

May 22, 2013 · 9:57 AM

Flawed Failures

If you are perfect, then you don’t have to read this today. If you are a flawed failure like me, you can keep reading. The good news is that you are just who God is looking for to use. He rarely picks anyone perfect to carry out His plan. If you look at the list of people God has used to do great things through, it’s full of flawed failures. It’s full of people who you probably wouldn’t want to work with.

Moses knew his own flaws and tried to use them as an excuse to not do what God was asking him to do. He stuttered. He murdered. He ran away. He was orphaned as a baby. He had excuses. God sees our excuses as opportunities to connect with others. He sees our flaws as ways to build dependence on Him. He’s ok with you not measuring up to what you think He wants. You actually have what He wants. That’s why He chose you to do His will.

Each of us have a purpose to fulfill. God has a desire to use you despite your flaws and excuses. He has a purpose for your life that only you can fulfill. God is not concerned with your past if you’ve gone to Him for forgiveness. He’s taken your past into account when He planned your future. He knew the struggles you were going to face. He knew where and how you were going to fail and still planned to use you. It’s hard for us to understand because what disqualifies us humanly somehow qualifies us spiritually.

God’s ways are higher than our ways. What we consider wise is foolishness to Him. When we point to the scars, disappointment, failures and sin, He points to the cross. It’s in our weakness that He can truly work. If we rely on our strengths and abilities, we get in His way. When we think we can’t or shouldn’t be used by Him, we are ready to be used by Him. If we had the ability to do it on our own, we wouldn’t rely on Him.

Look at Gideon. When he was approached by the angel, he was greeted with, “The Lord is with you, mighty man of God.” He had strength to accomplish what God wanted. He had the ability and the man power to do it. God took those things away from him so that he would not be able to say it was his ability that defeated the enemy. It could only be The Lord that allowed 300 men to defeat an entire army.

God can and will use our strengths, but He’s really interested in our flaws and failures. He uses those to bring healing to others and to show them that He can use them too. Be open about your past. Tell others about your scars. Your story (testimony) brings hope and healing to others. When you hide who you were, you hide the grace that God bestowed on you. Others need to see that God can forgive a past that’s dark and full of sin. Others need to see that God can use someone as flawed as you.

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February 8, 2013 · 10:42 AM

Joy in the Struggle

How do you find joy in the middle of a struggle? When your world is caving in on all sides, is it possible to still have peace and strength? I believe it is. We often confuse joy and happiness. They are completely different. Happiness is dependent on circumstances. Joy is not. It is something that lives in you and gives you strength to move forward when you don’t have the strength on your own. It is what keeps you going when everything tells you to quit.

I know what it’s like to struggle to find the will to live each day. I’ve faced things in my life that broke me. My brother would call me every hour just to make sure I was alive. I finally told him that I wasn’t going to give up or give in to everything that was coming against me. Each night as I laid in bed I would repeat Nehemiah 8:10. It says, “The joy of The Lord is your (my) strength.”

In our daily lives we have a choice to make. Are we going to let ourselves be destroyed by our circumstances or we going to endure them? None of us are exempt from having bad things happening to us. None of us are exempt from being dealt one bad thing after another until we reach our breaking point. Happiness will not help you get through them. If your strength is dependent on happiness, you will quickly crumble and fail. Depression will set in and your struggles will be compounded.

Great men of faith on the Bible endured their trials and tests because they kept in mind that the things that were coming against them were not an attack from God. They were tests to prove and strengthen their faith. Each person that endures hardships comes away with a deeper faith and is stronger for it. I found that what helped me was to keep in mind the promises that God had made to me. I think the people in the Bible did the same. They didn’t let their circumstances override what they knew about God. They hung on to the hope of better days ahead.

One of my favorite scriptures that helped me and still does when I go through struggles is Romans 5:3-5. It says, ” We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthens our confident hope of salvation. And this hope will not lead to disappointment. For we know how dearly God loves us, because he has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with his love. (NLT)”

Whatever you’re going through today, the struggles, the fears, the stresses, God sees you and is building you up. A person who works out doesn’t grow unless they push themselves further than they can go. You cannot get to where God wants you without being stretched. It is tiring. It is painful. It is tearful. You can rejoice and have joy as the scripture says when you are going through things because it still means God is moving you to where He wants you and He knows you can do it.

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October 16, 2012 · 6:36 AM

Potatoes or Mangos?

The other day I opened the pantry door looking for something to eat. While I was looking at the snack shelf, my son walked in and was looking at the lower shelves. He saw a sack of potatoes and grabbed one. I heard him say, “Mmm mango.” I looked down to see him try to bite the raw potato. You can imagine the look on his face when he tasted a hard, dirty potato instead of a soft, sweet mango. I laughed and took it from him and reminded him it was a potato, not a mango.

I don’t think many of us make that same mistake and I don’t think he’ll make it again either. When it comes to spiritual food, we often make that mistake though. We bite into something thinking it’s one thing and then find out it’s another. Our spirit needs to be fed as much as our physical body. It requires water from God’s word and food as well. Jesus Himself said, “Man shall not live by bread alone” in Matthew 4:4. He was referring to spiritual food and feeding your spirit.

How hard would it be to function if you ate one or two meals a week? How would that affect your work? How would that affect your daily routines? For many of us, that is all we feed our spirit. We go to church on Sunday and sometimes Wednesday. Other than that, we don’t think much about God, we don’t read christian books or the Bible daily and we rarely pray. These are all ways that we can feed our spirit.

When someone is physically starving, we can clearly see it in them. They first begin to lose weight and then they lose strength. It isn’t so easy to see when someone is spiritually starving, but the same thing happens. We need our spiritual strength to fight off temptation and other attacks. Ephesians 6:10, 11 in the Amplified says, “Be strong in The Lord [be empowered through your union with Him]; draw your strength from Him… Put on God’s whole armor [the heavy-armed soldier which God supplies], that you may be able to successfully stand up against all strategies and all the deceits of the devil.”

Being strong in The Lord requires that you spend time with Him and to build yourself up in Him so you can draw your strength from Him. Putting on heavy armor also requires strength. When our spirit is weak, it can’t handle that heavy armor. We look like David did when Saul tried to make him wear his armor. We need to armor on so we can successfully stand up against the attacks of the enemy. Without being able to bear that armor, we open ourselves to being deceived and to falling for temptations.

Are you facing attacks right now without armor? Are you being easily defeated in life? Do you keep falling into the same temptation over and over again? Those are signs that you need to strengthen your spiritual man? We need good food to feed our spirit man. Spend time praying each day, carve out a few minutes to read a verse or two from the Bible and then think about that verse, what it means and how you can apply it to your life. Read books that equip you to be a better Christian and help you to grow. Spend time with other believers and talk about spiritual things too. Don’t settle for potatoes when God has mangos for you!

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