This post was created to answer the Daily Posts Weekly Photo Challenge: ENDURANCE
http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_photo_challenge/endurance/
“If you’re serious about sanctification, you can expect to experience heart-wrenching moments that try your faith, your endurance, and your patience.”
― Sheri L. Dew, If Life Were Easy, It Wouldn’t Be Hard: And Other Reassuring Truths
This week’s photo challenge from THE DAILY POST is : HUMANITY
http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_photo_challenge/humanity/
Here are my thoughts on humanity
Little Lamb! Little Lamb! Who hath made thee?
Today’s post is 4th in a series on the frailty of man and the strength of God. If you missed any of the previous posts you can find them at:
https://josephelonlillie.com/2014/09/09/dust-kiddies-pt-1/
https://josephelonlillie.com/2014/09/10/dust-kiddies-pt-2/
https://josephelonlillie.com/2014/09/11/dust-kiddies-pt-3/
Yesterday we discussed how the Lord wants to help us overcome our weakness and proclivity towards sin. That is good news! But there is more besides. Not only does God want to help us overcome our weakness, He wants to fill us with power that is not ours to accomplish great things. We were meant from something great but before we can do that great thing we must realize we cannot do it in our own strength.
Speaking through the apostle Paul God tells us,
6 For God, who said, “Let there be light in the darkness,” has made this light shine in our hearts so we could know the glory of God that is seen in the face of Jesus Christ.
7 We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure.[a] This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves. 2 Cor. 4:6,
When I first became a Christian the church was singing this song,
We dust kiddies were meant to be the temples of the Holy Ghost ; And because we are the temples of the Holy Spirit we are “Filled with praise, with power and with glory.”
You are the temple of the Holy Ghost Dust Kiddie and you were meant to do something great.
You may say “I can’t do anything great.”
But that is not true. Madeleine L’Engle writes,
“In a very real sense not one of us is qualified, but it seems that God continually chooses the most unqualified to do his work, to bear his glory. If we are qualified, we tend to think that we have done the job ourselves. If we are forced to accept our evident lack of qualification, then there’s no danger that we will confuse God’s work with our own, or God’s glory with our own.”
― Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art
And that great missionary James Hudson Taylor said,
“All God’s giants have been weak men who did great things for God because they reckoned on God being with them.”
Listen! Our lives with God and our service to God should challenge us. Our Christianity should make us realize we are living out the impossible.
When was the last time your service to God drove you to your knees?
When was the last time you allowed God to give you a task that was outside of your comfort zone?
Our work for God should drive us to our knees on a regular basis not because we are so righteous and godly we always pray but out of desperation because it is beyond us.Our work for God needs to be bigger than our own power to accomplish it. It needs to challenge us to a place beyond our own ability. It needs to drive us to prayer.
If you have gotten to a place where you have allowed ministry to become comfortable, if you have lost the challenge of ministry today or maybe you have never allowed the Lord to challenge you in ministry will you allow Him today to offer that challenge? Will you begin to ask Him to fill your earthen vessel with a light that will bring you into the challenge of changing the world?
“Nothing can save us that is possible. We who are about to die demand a miracle.” W.H. Auden
“God deals with people not with a natural therefore, but with a miraculous nevertheless. There never has been a situation so dark that the positive light of grace cannot dispel the darkness.” Karl Barth
“God loves the world. Although the world has “No” written on it, God intends that our “No” be consumed by His “Yes”. Darius L. Salter
“The wilderness inside today’s church is a much greater threat than the storm on the outside.” Darius L. Salter
” In prayer we find the ultimate space in which to practice obedience to truth, the space created by the Spirit who keeps troth with us all.” Parker Palmer
“Sincere prayer changes the one who prays before it changes the world for which one prays.”
Darius L Salter
“One of the purposes of prayer is to allow its participants to transcend the nagging particulars of life that normally preoccupy us. Prayer allows ordinary people to become players in much larger stakes; Washington, the United Nations, Bosnia, Afghanistan, and the totality of the world. There is a time for prayer to address immediate and local problems, even Uncle Larry’s lumbago and Aunt Gertrude’s gout. Prayer can petition God to cure many of our aches and pains. But I suspect that what prayer really needs to do is displace our self-serving agendas with more critical concerns.” Darius L. Salter
Lillie-Put 