Wednesday, September 2nd, 2015
Short posts to inspire and encourage
What do you have that God hasn’t given you? 1 Corinthians 4:7
Me – – – – nothing, not a thing.
Without what God has done – theres nothing here.
Just shapeless empty skin with nothing to hold me up on the inside. Still walking maybe but hollow and lifeless and crumpled up. Like the earth before God spoke – void and formless and covered by darkness.
But look what He’s done – look what He’s given us. Look how He’s saved us from ourselves.
“Open your mouth and taste, open your eyes and see— how good God is. Blessed are you who run to Him.” Psalm 34:8 The Message
God has given us Christ and with Him everything else – every good and perfect gift (James 1:17) and every last thing that we need for life and Godliness. (2 Peter 1:3)
“But by the grace of God go I” – how many times do I say it – even lightly sometimes – but in every pore I know it’s true. That it is only by His grace – this enormous unprecedented favour of salvation that I have anything good and worthwhile at all – that this human outline is filled in and has any substance to it at all. If not for that grace I’d be on my own and theres just not enough of me left to do this life without Him.
“ – – – that if the alive-and-present God who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life, he’ll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus, bringing you alive to himself? When God lives and breathes in you (and he does, as surely as he did in Jesus), you are delivered from that dead life. With his Spirit living in you, your body will be as alive as Christ’s! Romans 8:11 The Message – – – –
And with Him within the middle of us – can’t we be magnificent – so much more than ourselves, living the way He wants us to live – where it’s about Him and not about us, about what Christ can do in us and not about what we can’t do – where we reflect His glory not because we are perfect or are getting it right all the time, not because our faith is dazzling but because each day we say yes to Him and take his hand and follow and because He is alive and bigger in us than anything else.
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. 2 Corinthians 12:9
We lament over our weaknesses, the parts of us that still feel broken and that trip us up because – – – somehow we think it counts for something, that it will be held against us, that we should be better than we are – – – but it’s why He came, it’s where He shines, it’s where He shows himself real and powerful and true. Jesus who comes along side us in our brokenness and dwells with us in our sorrow and says – it’s OK – I’m bigger.
Where there is nothing of us to draw upon – it can be all of Him we draw upon, when there’s none of our own praises to sing we can begin singing His, when we hold no hope in our own strength or ability – we can hope totally in Him. And there we find ourselves and what we were looking for all along.
We give Jesus our nothing – He gives us His everything.
– – even your own life is not your business. It also is God’s business. Leave it to God. It is an astonishing thought. It can become a life-transforming thought . . . unclench the fists of your spirit and take it easy . . . What deadens us most to God’s presence within us, I think, is the inner dialogue that we are continuously engaged in with ourselves, the endless chatter of human thought. I suspect that there is nothing more crucial to true spiritual comfort . . . than being able from time to time to stop that chatter . . . ” Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets
Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.” C.S Lewis Mere Christianity.
Much love to you all today
Tracey xx
Got a minute – you can read why I started writing Women Connect posts here and find some of my other Women Connect posts here.
Linking up today with
Water Into Wine 