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Charles Stanley once said to never throw away your notes. If it was important enough to write it down once, then it is important enough for you to retain because your memory will fail you.

How true those words are, especially since I have grown so much older.

I really needed what I was reading this morning in my notes. I have been trying to do everything by myself because God gave me those abilities. Those things that I can do in a most excellent way because of the training and talent that God has blessed me with through the years. When things get piled up so high that I can't see over them, can't see around them, can't see under them and I just can't go through them, suddenly I realize I need God's help. Why wait so long?

We’ve often heard the “plug-in” to God’s power tune that was so popular back in the 90s. I don’t know who thought that one up, but that literally puts a person in the “power” seat. But it also highlights a crucial point: It is a deliberate decision to choose God’s energy.

Beth Moore had some words of encouragement for me today. I wrote this down April 12,2005. Just writing it down does not mean that we will retain if forever.

I am not stuck with permanent flaws. I have the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23). I must use this fruit and exercise in this fruit. We are called to exclamation point living! I must strive toward His working His works in me. I can't do a great work in myself. I do not have the strength. But He does and He promised to do this, so there is no struggle with His energy in me. God reveals this through His Spirit just as He bestows gifts through His Spirit.

What makes me think that fulfilling what God has called me to do won't cost me anything? Of course there is cost. When we strive to live to bring God glory there is deep cost because we are new, changed creatures living in a temporary, fallen world.

However, just as God provided all that was needed to build the Tabernacle, He provides all that is needed to act beyond my capabilities. Selah.

For, brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant as to our affliction having happened to us in Asia, that we were excessively burdened beyond our power, so as for us even to despair of living. 9 But we ourselves have the sentence of death in ourselves that we should not trust in ourselves, but trust God, the One raising the dead. 2 Corinthians 1:8

With power like that, who can defeat us? With power like that, how can we fail?

Father, help us to wake up with You on our minds and to always ask You to manage our time and to help us use Your energy in us. Amen

"Today's Little Lift" from Jim Bullington

Mercy and not Sacrifice (Sept. 29, 2010)