Today’s devotional: whose strength?
Whose strength and wisdom gets you through each day—God’s, or your own? The Bible speaks often of God’s immense power, wisdom, and strength, but that doesn’t stop most of us from relying on ourselves most of the time and calling on God only when our own abilities seem inadequate.
In a devotional at Lifetime Guarantee Ministries, Anabel Gillham describes the process through which she finally came to realize that God’s strength, and not her own, was what she needed to cope with life’s challenges:
Let’s just say that my attitude was, “I’ll call You if I need You, God.” And I never really thought through that mindset…. After years in an unhappy marriage, after having a profoundly retarded son, after financial frugality that seemed to take the joy out of life, after dealing with the unpleasant people that I couldn’t control or make go away… I began to need Him. I began to realize, for the first time in my life, that my strength was not working. […]
I had played “god” for a long time and was loathe to give up control. I was so sure of my ability. But God, through His patience and wonderful guiding hand in my life, brought me to the point where I can say very comfortably with Paul, “Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God” (2 Corinthians 3:5).
Read the full devotional at Lifetime Guarantee Ministries.
When we rely on our own strength, we will eventually find ourselves worn out and exhausted. God invites us to call on his strength instead. Are you tired from years of “playing god”? Do you need to relinquish control of your own life and turn it over to God?
