God’s promise for Week 3:
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." (2 Cor 12:9)
For those who want further Scripture reading each day here are a couple of suggestions:
-Read one Psalm a day and meditate on it.
-Read a chapter or part of a chapter out of Acts or Matthew or Hebrews each day, focusing on the idea of faith.
Day 19
“Search me and know my heart. Test me and read my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting" Ps 139:23-24
As we become less in our own eyes, I believe that God will give us a revelation of who He is. Remember the woman who pushed through the crowd to touch the hem of Jesus’ garment? She knew how big He was. And because of this recognition of who He was, she was healed of an illness that had plagued her for twelve years. Permit me to take this woman’s physical sickness and make it a symbol of our internal disease of pride. Are we aware enough of our sickness to be willing to crawl through the clamour of life just to touch the hem of Jesus’ garment? Are we aware now that it is not what we do that matters to God, but the state of our hearts? Have we come face to face with the realization that we have been busying ourselves with service in order to avoid letting God work in our hearts? We all have dark and dusty corners of our hearts that we haven’t let God in to clean, and I know that my corner is filled with pride. So why don’t we let God in to clean house? Because we’re afraid of pain. Because I don’t want to open the ‘Pandora’s Box’ that lurks within me. Because I want people to think I’m okay. This verse describes me so much of the time: “They screw their eyes shut so they won’t have to look, so they won’t have to deal with me face-to-face and let me heal them" (Matt 13:15 MSG). I think that admitting the fact that we’re not okay is what humility is. And trusting that God can heal us is where faith comes in. My husband Mike prayed for me today as I struggled through this whole topic of humility. In the course of his prayer, he said, “just because we put You in a box yesterday doesn’t mean we have to today." What an amazing God. We could be guilty of the sin of pride for the last twenty years and today, if we repent of it, it’s forgiven and we begin a new day! I don’t know about you, but I need a revelation of who God is, because I have put Him in a very small box. I’ve worked for him out of my own talents, often taking great pride in them. But right now, today, sitting here in front of my computer screen, I am filled with a longing just to know Him.
Prayer:
Lord, reveal yourself to us as we seek You today. We don’t want anything more than just to know You.
In Faith:
Let’s pray specifically today for the newest addition to our list of “hopeless cases"—ourselves! Let’s give God permission to do some housecleaning.
