I let You...

While making toast (and minding my own business, I might add) The Holy Spirit gave me some insight and truth about myself to swallow along with my breakfast. "You realize that you always ask for endurance before you ask for healing? For many reasons, you expect pain to linger MORE THAN you expect healing to come. You take pride in gritting it out and in your strength in the struggle. You still despise your weakness and I find it the perfect place in which to display My strength-if you let Me." Wow and ouch all at the same time. Only the Word of God has the power to cut you like that and get right to the heart of a matter.

Now, I must backup a bit and say that for the past few days I have been somewhat immobilized by back pain, but I also know that God was addressing far more than my temporary physical pain. I also knew there wasn't a whole lot to say to this except for, "guilty". The truth is, for "many reasons" just like He said, I have somehow come to expect pain to linger more than I expect healing to come. It isn't that I don't ask for and expect healing, I certainly do. And it's not as if I don't want it, because I do. I have, however, mistakenly learned to prepare (first) for the worse. I have violently assaulted my faith and insulted my God with my plans to just endure and tolerate pain. I have become too familiar and jaded with the "reality" of the natural and have allowed it to override the truth of the supernatural.

I am not ignorantly suggesting that life with Christ is all rainbows and roses. Jesus Himself said that in this world we would have many trials, but He also challenged us to be of good cheer, filled with courage and abounding in confidence because He has overcome the world! God doesn't merely possess some healing power, He is supremely Healer. He is MY Healer and He is YOUR Healer to be exact. And the reality of present circumstances in no way negates the truth of who God is.

Pain comes, of course. Endurance is necessary, for sure. Faith doesn't deny the existence of circumstances but believes something better exists beyond what is currently evident. "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen." Heb 11:1 The Amplified Bible says this; "being the proof of things we do not see and the conviction of their reality." To have faith, as I was reminded this morning, is believing God first. And it is far more than just believing God can, it is believing He wants to and He will.

"God You are right to say I that find a certain pride in toughing my way through things in my own strength. I despise my weakness and instead of inviting You into it, I foolishly struggle to prove to myself and to You that it doesn't exist. Let Your strength be made perfect in all my many areas of weakness. I resist my resistance to You once again. Help me. Heal me. I let You..."