After years of desperately wanting to please God but failing miserably in passing so many of the tests He has given me, I was delighted to at long last have a day of sweet victory. The reason for all the years of failure and for that blessed day of victory I share with you now.
I failed time and again for years because I tried to exert myself in my human weakness apart from God as though I needed to prove myself to God and pass His tests without Him.
That day of victory, I called upon the name of the Lord, I prayed, I sought Him, I put my trust in Him not in me, I depended on Him, I abided in Him, I looked to Him, I knew I would fail without Him, I asked for Him to fill me with His Holy Spirit once again, I followed the leading of His Spirit, and I relied on the love, power, mercy, grace, and strength of His Spirit living inside me.
I was victorious THROUGH THE LORD JESUS CHRIST. I denied self, died to self, took up my cross, and followed the Lord (Luke 9:23). I yielded myself to Jesus that He would live through me (Galatians 2:20). I lived for God not for me (2 Cor. 5:15). I lived according to His ways not the world’s as I learn studying the Bible daily. Which means I loved when I would have hated. I forgave when I would have sought vengeance. I chose mercy not bitterness. I chose His will not mine. I chose to be thankful even though my flesh was really uncomfortable with my circumstances. And I take no glory for any of this. ALL glory belongs to the Lord!
How foolish it is when we think we can follow Jesus without Jesus. How foolish it is when we think we can pass God’s tests without the Spirit of God. How foolish it is when we trust in our flesh rather than in the Lord and His power and all else He supplies us.
Oh, what blessed victory we can have when we turn, turn, turn to the Lord!
“Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?” Galatians 3:3 NKJV
“Thus says the LORD: “Cursed is the man who trusts in man And makes flesh his strength, Whose heart departs from the LORD. For he shall be like a shrub in the desert, And shall not see when good comes, But shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, In a salt land which is not inhabited. “Blessed is the man who trusts in the LORD, And whose hope is the LORD. For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters, Which spreads out its roots by the river, And will not fear when heat comes; But its leaf will be green, And will not be anxious in the year of drought, Nor will cease from yielding fruit.” Jeremiah 17:5-8 NKJV
““I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.” John 15:5 NKJV