I Can Relate

This morning, I woke up an hour and a half before my alarm. I stayed in bed and prayed for an hour of that, before getting up and realizing I left my study Bible at the church yesterday. So I sat in the living room, checked emails and waited for my wife to wake up (we’re down to one car again, so she’s my ride), while contemplating on whether or not I should walk to go and get my Bible. She got up, I went in to the office before (or around) 6, and studied. And I prayed some more, but mostly, I got on my phone and chatted with people. I’ve not been motivated lately. In fact, I’ve been depressed. I’ve been trying to get certain things done in my life, and slammed in to one brick wall after another. I feel overwhelmed, stressed, and anxious. I say I trust God, but, over and again, I keep trying to make it happen on my own, and end up hurting myself in the process. I know I should trust God more. I should pray more. I should surrender it all, but I’m anxious, I’m tired, I’m stretched too thin at times, and I keep reverting back to old ways and habits. Even as a preacher, I struggle with many things!

So, what hope do I have? What’s wrong with me? Why do I keep going back when I want to move forward? I think Paul has an answer:

“So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”  (Romans 7:21-24)

I can relate to that! I feel I should be better, further along than I am, but I’m not! What hope do I have? Paul ends the section with this:

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin. (7:25)

I can’t serve God with and in my flesh. I can’t do it on my own. My flesh is a sinful creature in nature! I must surrender, and seek the Spirit. I must let the Father be God of the outcome, and stop trying to control things. It’s time to let go and let God.

Matthew 6:19-34

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

“The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!

“No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money”

“Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?  Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

2 Corinthians 12:1-10

I must go on boasting. Though there is nothing to be gained by it, I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows. And I know that this man was caught up into paradise—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows— and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter. On behalf of this man I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses— though if I should wish to boast, I would not be a fool, for I would be speaking the truth; but I refrain from it, so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me. So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. 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 of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.