Friday, November 21, 2008

Your strength, or His?

There is another part to what God spoke to me the other night. There is a place in Him where you don't have to feel beaten up and condemned for your failures and your mess ups. We all do stupid things everyday. Some of us have our outgoing image or our happy face that we put on everyday for the world to see. Inside though, we are crying and kicking and screaming. Some of us are dealing with hidden sin, insecurities and strongholds that we can't rid ourselves of.

For the past few years I have let my behind be kicked time and time again by the same thing. I would come around the mountain and it would pop up in my face again. Everytime I felt like I would kick it, it would kick me! When I thought I had once and for all gotten rid of it, it would rear its ugly face again! When you hate something so much and its in your face for 3 years straight, and you feel like you are doing all you can but nothing is stopping it, you might start feeling like a failure. You can't do anything right. Why can't you beat this thing?

Well if anyone knows about feeling like a piece of dirt in that area it's me. But one thing I finally realized, or should I just say, God revealed to me, is the truth of doing things in your own strength. For years I have heard, "you are doing it in your own strenght!" I would get so frustrated because I would think but how? How do you know when you are and how do you not?! I couldn't fully understand that. Even now I still have more I would like to learn in that area. I understand the concept of not taking the care of a problem, giving it to God, and letting Him handle it. But in practical application how do you do it? Well I got it! ....

You admit that you are nothing. You can't do it on your own. You are a screw up. BUT, because of the cross God's grace is there to sustain you. To hold you up. To fight your battles for you. There is nothing you can do without God anyway. So laying in my bathtub crying because I wanted rid of this problem, God's love calmed me down and let me see that He is not afraid of my mess up's. He see's my heart. He knows I want to change and that is all that He needs to do the work. When I take the care of the problem; feeling guilty, beating myself up, feeling like I can't do it, then I have just taken God's ability to do it for me. I have no faith in myself that I can do it. But I have faith that God can do it. He already did. Everything I need was provided at the cross. So my measly little problem is nothing He hasn't seen before and nothing He won't see again. He knows how to take care of it. I just have to trust Him.

Before I would get all fired up and get that I CAN attitude. Then I would fall right back into my mess and feel like a failure all over again. This time, I will press in, seek God's face and if I mess up then I will cover it with the Blood, move on and keep going. You've heard it many times; the analogy of falling of the horse, but brush yourself off and keep going. That's what it is. But by giving it to God and not doing it in your strength is when you say, I can't do this, I probably will mess up, but I trust you God. The more I seek you, the more I love you, the easier it will be and less of a desire for other things I will have. Don't make excuses to sin, that's not what I'm saying. But if you are sincerely trying, God see's that and honors an honest heart. Let Him be your everything. Don't worry about fixing your life. That's His job. Just seek His face, His ways, His smile, and His desires and everything else will be taken care of!

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