Do you remember the book The Little Engine That Could? A small engine keeps repeating the words “I think I can. I think I can.” By using sheer willpower, she pulls an entire train over the mountain. That’s a nice children’s story, but the truth of the Christian life is very different. In the real world, our efforts and determination often fall short. Only by walking in the power of the Holy Spirit can we live a godly life.
In the Old Testament, God’s Spirit would temporarily come upon saints for a particular work. However, after Jesus ascended to heaven, He sent the Spirit to dwell within each believer (Luke 24:49). Consider what this means: If you’re a Christian, God is living inside you, available to help throughout life by providing guidance, comfort, and empowerment.
Obedience to Christ is impossible for anyone relying on his or her own strength. For some reason, though, Christians often try to live life by depending on themselves. Defeat and failure are unavoidable without divine power in our life.
Do you recognize your need for God? Begin each day confessing your dependence on Him. Ask to be filled with His Spirit so that all you think, do, and say will be an overflow from Him. Then trust Him to work in mighty ways through you.
Christ’s sacrifice on the cross paid for all our sins, but believers are still susceptible to temptation and disobedience. Therefore, we must understand what to do when we yield to our sinful desires. Knowing our struggle, God has graciously given us a way to receive cleansing so we can continue to grow in holiness. We’re to …
• See sin as God sees it. Our Father is absolutely pure, and to Him, every sin is an offense that violates His law, grieves the Holy Spirit, and belittles Christ’s sacrifice.
• Take responsibility for it. Trying to soften sin’s heinous nature by calling it a mistake, weakness, or shortcoming is unacceptable. We must acknowledge our guilt and disobedience rather than make excuses or blame others.
• Confess it. Agreeing with God about our wrongdoing is a blessed privilege because He then washes us clean of the guilt. And what’s more, He empowers us to turn away from that sin in repentance so we can begin walking afresh in holiness.
Although John explained how we are to deal with sin, his main purpose was to encourage us to turn from it and walk in obedience to God. The longer we are Christians, the less sin should characterize our life.
In the face of difficulty, how quickly do you shift your focus to God and seek to know His way through the situation? When we choose to trust and submit to the Lord’s path, He’ll do amazing things in and through us.
Moses is a good example. After unsuccessfully trying to rescue the Israelites by his own strength, he fled and spent 40 years in the wilderness. In that time, his pride, self-reliance, and self-will were broken. Humbled, he was now someone God could use to accomplish the slaves’ deliverance from Egypt.
Through Moses, the Lord demonstrated what great things He could do through one yielded, dependent person:
• God rescued His people without a strong army, an insurrection, or a long, drawn-out war. All it took was the display of His mighty power.
• He proved the superiority of His way by sending more than two million slaves out of bondage with their captors’ riches (Ex. 3:21-22).
• He received all the glory by proving that He alone is the God of heaven and earth.
Our past failures never hamper God’s ability to use us. In fact, our weakness is what makes us useful and shows that all the glory is His.
Whenever challenges arise, there are two ways to respond—God’s way or our way. In today’s passage, we see what happened when Moses took matters into his own hands. Although his motives were pure—namely, the relief of his peoples’ suffering—his method was wrong. Moses ...
• Focused on the difficulty instead of the Lord. How often have you and I done the very same thing? If the unfairness or pain of a situation grabs our attention, we can lose sight of our all-powerful God.
• Relied on his own strength and understanding. When a problem confronts us, the most natural response is to do whatever we can to make it right. Our way may seem so logical at the time, but it won’t accomplish God’s purposes.
• Acted impulsively instead of waiting on the Lord. If a situation seems urgent, fixing the problem as fast as possible easily becomes our top priority.
At some point, we’ve acted similarly and suffered the consequences of self-reliance. But God didn’t reject Moses or cancel His plans for the man. Instead, the Lord refined his character through trials and gave him another chance. Don’t you think our loving Father will do the same for us?
Many people simply can’t believe that the Lord loves them. Others think He does, but only when they perform to some imaginary standard of excellence. Why is it so hard for some of us to accept His unconditional love?
One reason is that we have a hard time loving other people without restrictions. The way we show care and acceptance can be shaded by self-interest. Or it might ebb and flow, depending upon the other person’s behavior. The fact that human love can be conditional causes us to wrongly assume that the Lord’s can as well.
A sense of unworthiness is another factor. But whether or not we feel deserving of God’s love, the truth is that no one is worthy of His goodness and mercy. The Father’s love has nothing to do with our merit; it is based solely on His grace, Jesus’ work of redemption on our behalf, and our secure position in Christ. To consider yourself beyond the reach of grace is to trample on the Son’s sufficient sacrifice and the Father’s generous gift.
Like so much of the Christian life, accepting God’s love is a matter of faith. Even when you can’t feel it, believe it.
