WEAKNESS AND INABILITY:A LAUNCHPAD TO GODS POWER

I am turning 64 in a few weeks. As I evaluate my life O can honestly say I have never felt more inept,inadequate,  and impotent. Do any of you feel this way?  This is an all to familiar place for me in my life to be. I have developed an aversion to inadequacy and impotency. In the past I was a high achiever, a self sufficient loner, very self disciplined, focused, highly ambitious, in control, a planner, a success driven striver. I always made sure my ducks were lined up and that I had alternatives to my alternatives to fix and solve any problem that I had. But not any more. Too much failure, too much brokenness, to many broken dreams, too many bad decisions, too much humiliation. Today, after 43 years of being a Christian, I have truly learned that before God I am truly helpless.

The truth is that if we are really honest with ourselves,, we are always inadequate. Our Lord said so in John 15:6, "Apart from Me, you can do nothing." This statement and believing it are foundational to understanding the kind of person who will be most used by God. Life, in fact, is too much for us. This business of living in awareness and response to God, to live for His glory, to love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, to live in caring attentive love to the people around us, and to do that for 70 to 80 years with joy and perseverance, utterly exceeds our capacities. We aren't smart enough; we don't have enough energy; we can't concentrate adequately. We are unbelieving, apathetic, fragile, weak, and fickle.

Not all the time, to be sure. We have spurts of love, passion, risks of faith, moments of heartfelt caring, and extraordinary courage; but invariably we slip back into laziness, dullness, fatigue, unbelief, selfishness, or greed. That is why a ruthless honesty before God and ourselves will always leave us shattered by our inadequacy.

There is an enormous gap between what we think we can do and what God calls us to do. As long as I think that God calls me to do only what I think I can do (i.e.control, manipulate, contain, play it within my own self made safety nets) I am fine. In short, as long as I live within the confines within my own self imposed limitations and abilities all is well. But what happens when your ideas of what we can do or want to do are small and trivial in comparison to God's idea of what He can do in and through us, whether you are 18 or 64?That is where we often times get afraid, doubting, discouraged, despair, and feel hopeless.

God does not call us to do only what we can do, He calls us to do what He can do! Christianity is supernatural or it is nothing!!!!! Jesus says in John 15:5-6, ""As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing." Do you hear that? Do you believe that? It will either bring you down to utter discouragement in your pride or lift you up to draw you to his supernatural help.

I am motivated to come to God because of the reality and the deep conviction that I am completely helpless to do my life on my own. I have come to see that my impotency, my helplessness, my weakness, my brokenness, and my neediness is a precious gift from God, because this is the place that releases the true flow of God's omnipotent power, strength, and grace in my life and ministry and it will be the same for you. God knows where His power and glory thrive and where it is diminished

Oh the promises in the bible to what He wants to do to us, for us, in us, and through us! God's ideas for us are divine, supernatural, extraordinary, and utterly disproportionate to who we are! What God desires to do is to intersect divine omnipotence with our impotence and together produce extraordinary miraculous and supernatural lives.

Listen to these promises and reach out to believe them over your life!

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?
Romans 8:31-32

For all the promises of God find their Yes in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our Amen to God for his glory
2 Corinthians 1:20

Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
Hebrews 4:16

Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us
Ephesians 3:20

"Nothing is impossible with God"
Luke 1:37

When you understand this extraordinary God and the extraordinary work that He desires to do through your working you can begin praying a bold prayer prayer like this:
“Lord, let me make a difference for you that is utterly disproportionate to who I am".

Bold prayers like this honor God, and God honors bold prayers. God is not offended by your biggest dreams and boldest prayers. He is offended by anything less. If your prayers are not impossible to you, they are insulting to God. Why? Because they don't require divine intervention.But ask God to do the miraculous and God is moved to omnipotent action. Ask God to move His omnipotence over your life. Ask God to do something utterly disproportionate to who you are. The greatest moments of your life are supernatural, miraculous moments.

There is nothing that our supernatural God likes more than keeping promises, answering prayers, helping his beloved children, and performing miracles. that is who He is and what He does.

So this is how I desire to pray each and every day of my life. This is a prayer that any one of you who feel passionless, loveless, weak, inadequate, can pray boldly without fear of presumption.The wording of the prayer contains a disclaimer:

"I am not great. But you, Lord, are very great. So in your astonishing sovereignty and glorious omnipotence and according to your mighty promises you can flood little, inadequate, impotent me with love, passion, and power and let my little life make a difference far beyond all my little powers. Let my little timid prayers be expanded into big sweeping prayers like these:

Lord, I have heard of your fame;I stand in awe of your deeds, Lord. Repeat them in our day, in our time make them known
Habakkuk 3:1-2

Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains would tremble before you! As when fire sets twigs ablaze and causes water to boil,come down to make your name known to your enemies and cause the nations to quake before you! For when you did awesome things that we did not expect, you came down, and the mountains trembled before you. Since ancient times no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who acts on behalf of those who wait for him
Isaiah 64:1-4

O Lord, there is none like you to help, between the mighty and the weak. Help us, O Lord our God, for we rely on you, and in your name we have come against this multitude. O Lord, you are our God; let not man prevail against you.
2 Chronicles 14:11

Jesus is not asking you and me to do anything that He is not already doing and cannot do. He is inviting us into His life of helpless impotent dependence upon our heavenly Father. To become more like Jesus is to feel more and more that you cannot do life. The very thing we often times try to escape, our own helplessness, becomes the launch pad to prayer and then to God's omnipotent supernatural help and grace.

Calling for God to do things that only He can do!
Pastor Bill

 

Field Guide to Pride Part 3 HUMILITY, PRIDE’S PHOTO NEGATIVE

God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble"
James 4:6 ESV

For the past two blogs I've been talking about pride. In essence,  pride wants to be the center of attention: for good or for bad. Pride’s fixation with self can only be countered with one thing:
humility’s forgetfulness of self. Humility is the photo-negative of pride.

We will begin killing pride when we experience more and more of pride’s photo-negative: humility. If pride puts us in a position of opposition to God, then humility delights in taking a posture of dependence upon God. This posture of dependence puts us in a position to receive grace from God.

The apostle Peter expounds upon these points in illuminating ways in 1 Peter 5:5-7 (read also James 4:6), "Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another, for "God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble." Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God so that at the proper time he may exalt you, casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you."

First Peter says,“God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble” (1 Pet. 5:5). This the promise of humility. God is personally and providentially- supportive of the humble. And the grace He extends to the humble is indescribably rich. Nothing could be better than to have an infinitely powerful and wise God treat us graciously. Grace is a wonderful word. It means we are recipients of the favor of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. When we are humble, we are in a place to receive His grace which He lavishes upon us. Isaiah 57:15 "For thus says the High and Lofty One Who inhabits eternity, whose name is holy: I dwell in the high and holy place, with him who has a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones." Peters wording here again speaks of continual action. God has always and will forever continue to give grace to those who humble themselves before the Lord.

Next, he defines humility more spatially. Humility pitches its tent in a certain place: “under the mighty hand of God” (1 Pet. 5:6). The word “humble,” as it’s used in verse six, is not only a reference to an attitude, but to a position as well. God gives His grace to those who recognize their lowly position in the presence of a holy and righteous God by honestly assessing ourselves in light of God's holi­ness and our sinfulness. That is the twin reality that all genuine humility is rooted in: Gods holiness and our sinfulness.

Fenelon explained, "A peasant shut up in his village only partially knows his wretchedness, but let him see rich palaces, a superb court, and he will realize all the poverty of his village. He cannot endure its hovels after a sight of so much magnificence. It is thus that we see our ugliness and worthlessness in the beauty and infinite grandeur of God.” In the same way, it's easy for a man or woman to be proud until they catch a glimpse of God's holiness. John Piper says, “Humility can only survive in the presence of God. When God goes, humility goes. In fact, you might say that humility follows God like a shadow.”

John Calvin wrote, “It is evident that man never attains to a true self knowledge until he has previously contemplated the face of God, and come down after such contemplation to look at himself.” Without an honest awareness of the reality of God’s holiness and our sinfulness, all self-evaluation will be skewed and we'll fail to either understand or practice true humility: We'll miss out on experiencing the promise and the pleasures of grace that God offers to the humble. That is why I want to direct you to God's help for evalu­ating your life honestly, to understand whether you're growing in the humility that draws His gaze and attracts more of His grace.

Finally, Peter then answers the most obvious question: how can someone be humble? Answer: we humble ourselves by “casting all [our] anxieties on him” (1 Pet. 5:7). If pride stubbornly insists on carrying our own cares, then humility is quick to cast our cares on God. Humility even knows what to do when we don’t know what to do: keep looking to him!

When faced with impossible odds, king Jehoshaphat knows enough to look at the King Eternal and say,“we do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you” (2 Chron. 20:12).

In the quest for humility, we must be sure to avoid pride’s counterfeit version of humility: self-deprecation. What’s the discernable difference? Humility is not obsessed with tearing ourselves down. C. S. Lewis stated the distinction memorably: “Humility is not thinking less of ourselves, but thinking of ourselves less.” In other words, humility is fundamentally a form of self-forgetfulness as opposed to pride’s self-fixation. And humility’s self-forgetfulness has a certain flavor: joy. It’s not dour or sour. The joy of self-forgetfulness comes when a superior satisfaction in God overpowers our self-preoccupation.

Humility does not join pride in treating others with contempt. We are too busy looking up at God’s glory to look down on others or feel smug about ourselves. And unlike pride, humility does not have to be the center of attention. Humility is not self-promoting; it enjoys pointing out evidences of grace in others. It can celebrate their accomplishments.

What are you building with your life? A marriage? A family? A business? A church? A career? A ministry? A friendship? In all your ven­tures, are you aware of your need for God's grace to give your efforts lasting value? So many human ventures have failed because humility was lacking. Ultimately, there can be no effective expansion of your life’s mission and ministry, no growth and maturity, no fulfillment of the specific purpose that God has called you to, apart from the cultivation of humility in your heart and the weakening of pride in your life. But I don’t want you rooting out pride because of its perils and pitfalls. Our pursuit should be driven by the amazing promise Peter and James gives that humility holds out to us: God gives grace to the humble!

Do you long for God's providen­tial help and blessing? Then let's allow the promise of humility to shape our life and choices, so that your life will begin to be colored in every area by grace. God clearly states that He is drawn to the humble. He's also clear that He opposes the proud. These two, humility and pride, cannot coexist. Where one is fostered, the other is defeated. Which will you pursue? If you feel convicted of pride in any form, of failing to humble yourself or failing to glorify God, take the time right now to flee to the cross and receive the forgiveness for this sin of pride that God hates. Humble yourself before Him and confess it specifically to the one whom you have offended. And receive the grace of His forgiveness. Tell Him that you want to declare war upon pride in your life- that you want to declare war on this active, daily tendency towards self-sufficiency, this desire to live independently of Him when in truth we are dependent upon him for every breadth. Gladly announce make a declaration of dependency. Make this confession humbly and daily for the rest of your life. Hold on to the promise God gives to those who are humble before Him: GOD GIVES GRACE TO THE HUMBLE!

Pastor Bill