His Strength in Our Weakness

Hi again everyone.  I am so thankful for the support you all have shown us over the last couple of weeks.  This may be a bit vain, but even just looking at the number of page views is encouraging.  I really hope that this blog can be an encouragement to you too.  Corrie and I have tried to be dreadfully honest with our feelings and thoughts, hoping to just make known God's compassion and faithfulness to two regular Joes (Corrie is more of a Josephina).  Sometimes it can seem like someone going through a health crisis...and ESPECIALLY someone going through a health crisis with an awesome blog like THIS one :-)  must have an extra dose of spirituality.

Well, with every post we want to debunk that myth and just be real.  During this sickness, I've fought with God.  At times, I've fought with Corrie.  At times I've been a selfish husband.  At times I would rather sit and watch an episode of "24" than spend time with God.  But I can say with full confidence that it is "God who works in us both to will and to work according to his good pleasure" (as our pastor mentioned on Sunday).  While my choices do definitely have spiritual and eternal impact, at the same time I rest knowing that the Lord Almighty is shaping me and molding me and correcting me so that I am indeed being changed "from glory to glory." 

I guess I just want you to know that anything that seems noble and attractive in us is really just Christ in us.  He takes real, normal people and makes them his own.  And that process is a beautiful thing.  Sometimes it seems like the only raw materials I give him to work with are...not the most holy things.  But he raises up a warrior where there was once only a peasant.  His Spirit whispers, "I delight in you.  You are mine.  You are a new creature, and you are more than a conqueror."  And slowly, but incredibly powerfully, those words course through our veins and transform our beings from fallen sinners to a "royal priesthood." 

It's crazy when you start to read the Bible as a child would, when you try to believe EVERYTHING it says without injecting it with your own "buts" and "explain-it-aways".  Then you realize that Christ "has given me EVERY spiritual blessing."  He has "given me EVERYTHING that pertains to life and godliness."  The God who spoke the world into existence and who tells the tides how high they can come actually lives INSIDE of me.  The voice that "splinters the cedars of Lebanon" is the same voice that tells me, "Neither do I condemn you...go and sin no more."  Then I see that Jesus says, "You will do greater works than these."  And, "Those who follow me will cast out demons and heal the sick."  And, "WHATEVER you ask in my name, believe you have received it and it will be given to you."

I see these things and I realize that I spend most of my time believing only about 10% (super rough estimate) of the promises of God.  What would this world look like if we could be like children, and just believe what God tells us?  We'd probably start to see a lot more of His power and even less of ours.  Let's try it and see what happens.