More Trials, More Joys

"More trials, more joys; more temptations, more triumphs; more prayers, more answers; more toils, more strength; more fights, more victories; and then come sickness, old age, disease, death. Is it over now? No! there is more yet-awakening in Jesus' likeness, thrones, harps, songs, psalms, white raiment, the face of Jesus, the society of saints, the glory of God, the fulness of eternity, the infinity of bliss. O be of good courage, believer."
Spurgeon

Strength For Today

"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."
Matt 6:34

I was thinking about Rach Pavey's contribution at church a few weeks back about 'strength for today' - that God doesn't give you strength for the year, or for a decade or a month. He gives you strength for one day at a time. Rach is experiencing this to the extreme, but I was thinking that it's an incredibly important principle to learn in general life. Hard times or not.

You see it over and over again in scripture. Manner falls from Heaven - God provides out of thin air for his people when all natural means of provision are absent. But they're commanded to gather only enough for one day. God wants our confidence set firmly in him. In the Lord's prayer Jesus gives us a template - to pray for our daily bread. Nothing more. And the Lord's prayer itself sounds like a daily prayer. Daily we ask for strength against temptation, daily we forgive, daily we seek first God's kingdom and daily we pray for deliverance from evil.

I was wondering, off the back of this, if a lot of lethargy and apathy in out struggle against sin is born out of thinking too far ahead. We think about whether we can struggle and fight week in week out, year upon year, for the rest of our lives. The task seems impossibly big and we collapse under the weight of it. We don't even try. But if you broke it down and just focused on today, the next 16 hours you're awake, suddenly it sounds okay. One day at a time. And tomorrow - we wake up and do the same.

This no doubt has a similar application in a number or other areas. Provision, health, singleness, marriage, work, relationships... pretty much anything about you life that causes worry, stress and anxiety.

Weak Enough for God to Use

"All God's giants have been weak men, who did great things for God because they reckoned on His being with them."
Biography of James Hudson Taylor, 1973 edition, p349

It seems, rather than being strong enough for God to use, we need to become weak enough. A person fully aware of their weakness and fully aware of God's strength is one who relies totally on Him. They are less likely to push in their own strength, but rather cry out to God continually, knowing that they are destined to fail by themselves.

I do often wondered if God deliberately chooses people who aren't the obvious choice for this very reason. And I wonder if He may pick me for some task which I feel totally ill-equipped to complete in my natural self. My faith better be real enough!

Another quote from the biography of Hudson Taylor on this point:

"I myself, for instance, am not specially gifted, and am shy by nature, but my gracious and merciful God and Father inclined Himself to me, and I who was weak in faith He strengthened while I was still young. He taught me in my helplessness to rest on Him, and to pray even about little things in which another might have felt able to help himself."
p487

"For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God. And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that, as it is written, "Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.""
1 Corinthians 1:26-31