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Have you sought to exchange your own human effort for divine strength? What happened?
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Yes I have. I worked hard but had a scheduled prayer meeting which was not convenient and energy consuming. I asked the Lord to help me and I was able to make it to the prayer meeting and participated like I had all the energy.
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I can identify with the idea that, the more we do not feel like praying and reading the Bible, that’s the time we most need to pray and read the Bible! And yes, we need God’s grace to persevere. I have experienced it in a different way than the author – in my marriage. There was a time when my wife and I were very irritable over inconsequential things. When we realized we weren’t having our devotions regularly, we made a commitment to do so together and regularly. As reading the Bible and praying once again became a habit in our lives, we find that we aren’t getting irritable, and our marriage is getting better, without too much conscious effort on our part. It’s because God’s strength which we obtain during devotions bears us up.
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Prayer is like we talking to God, and reading the bible is like God talking to us. In any normal, healthy communication, it should be two-way. I note with interest that the speaker said that too often our prayers do not reflect the content of the portion of Scripture we just read. That is, we are often too preoccupied with bringing a list of requests to God to fulfill. We might not have given enough time and attention to what God told us in the Bible. Hence our prayers do not reflect this content. This statement is a good check-up on ourselves.
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Sometimes I practice exchanging my weakness with God’s strength, sometimes I forgot.
But today, I am supposed to have a meeting with a colleague to discuss on some project. I felt unprepared for the discussion. I prayed for God’s wisdom and leading and the meeting went well. We had some fruitful discussion and I felt relieved and grateful to God for answering my prayer. -
As an ICU and ED RN for 45 years, I learned very early how I needed Jesus to guide and strengthen me frequently, especially working nights. When patients depended on me, Jesus was my first contact.
