Strength Found in Building Together
Little Unload
I have a friend that I have been friends with since grade school. She is not a Christian. She is not well, and was put on bed rest. I felt like I should help her. I went to be with her. I didn’t count on being so tempted to revert and resurrect that old, dead me. It has been one struggle after another trying to allow Jesus to live in me and me to stay dead. One day I am strong, the next very weak. I have stumbled more this week than I have in a long time, and it has only served to show me how very weak and immature I am. I have learned a lot of very valuable lessons while here, but unfortunately at the expense of making some horrible stumbles. Thankfully, the Lord is always faithful, even when we are flat on our faces in the muck of sin. He has allowed these stumbles to be a starting place for me to really be honest with my friend about my weakness and absolute dependence upon Jesus. It was humiliating a couple of times, but some really good discussions have come out of it. I guess if you get a chance, I would like to get some feedback on how to overcome strongholds in our lives.... I am beginning to see why we need each other so much. I can see how I have been very tempted to be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin here. I miss my “family” and am ready to go home to them. Yet, I also see my very real need to learn to lean completely upon Jesus so that I can stand even when I am alone.
In His Love,
You’ll notice that Paul only was “alone” once that we know of in all his years of traveling places, and Jesus even took three brothers to “within a stone’s throw” at a time one would think, of all times, He would want to be “alone”—at Gethsemane. I just got back from Ohio and not only had the pleasure of several brothers traveling with me, but many more around me there. It was wonderful and always is. SOMETIMES (as that one occasion we know of in all of Paul’s years) it could happen that someone would HAVE to be alone, but it is NOT the way to Build on the whole.
All to say, PART of being an Overcomer (that everyone wants or needs so badly!)—is BUILDING well (Mat.16:18)!!! And thus, the reason that “traveling alone” is very seldom God’s idea. Perhaps someone should have taken time off of work to travel with you and your husband, or another sister with you and your husband, or a brother and sister, and yourself... rather than you going by yourself? Particularly as a female, the aloneness and traveling is a TERRIBLE idea, though the “world” has sold us a bill of goods otherwise. Even “religious folks” who try to camp out on Proverbs 31 will NEVER tell you that the CONTEXT of Proverbs 31 is AMONGST GOD’S PEOPLE, not in the world.
Anyway, just filter it in. “Strength” is OFTEN “BUILDING WELL”—not internal personal strength. Whatever weaknesses we have will never be “overcome” so that we can feel “mature” and say, “I have no need of you.” It is BUILDING TOGETHER, GOING AND DOING TOGETHER that allows our Strengths to come out and our weaknesses to be overcome, often by being COVERED rather than blowing the sins away with our great “maturity” and depth! Thus, the Essentiality of Building well together, for Him and in Him....
Love,
5/8/2002
