When we come to the end of ourselves, how glorious it is to see God at work. Oh, if only we would yield at the start rather than be forced to surrender by sheer exhaustion and defeat. I have been blessed to witness miracles in two women’s lives in weeks past that exalt the name of the Lord as clearly these sisters in Christ could not have made it on their own.
“I can’t see anything,” a dear friend told me as she peered through the viewer on the borrowed digital camera in an effort to photograph me and Walk by Faith Ministry’s canine co-founder Red.
How could she possibly see? The day was magnificently bright and sunny – too sunny for amateurs like the two of us to know how to set up the photograph with the ocean in the background. Meanwhile, my friend was recently told by a doctor she needs eye surgery.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said without thinking. “God will take the picture for you.”
Admittedly, I had spoken out of impatience. This was my third attempt asking various people, strangers included, to take photographs for Walk by Faith Ministry’s new business cards. I was worn out, and irritable.
My friend could see nothing, but God can see everything. The photographs were phenomenal, and yet my friend took them without any vision. She had to rely completely on the Lord’s.
The second miracle I witnessed recently involved a woman worship leader at church who woke up recently without a voice. She also lost a loved one. Yet she had been bound and determined not to let the devil have the victory. She stood before the Lord, and the congregation, and humbly did something I had never seen a worship leader do. She asked the church to pray for her that she could sing.
Then, with the sheer strength of the Lord, she worshipped the Lord before us all with every ounce of her heart. The sound seemed to come straight from the heavens. She walked around as she sang, even moving up the aisle as she belted out the solo with the choir joining in to lift the worship even higher. The Lord, when she yielded her voice, heart, and worship to Him, seemed to give her His own voice.
I think of the words I write, how often I continue to struggle in my own flesh trying to muster up just the right words – forgetting time and again how my job is to submit to the Lord that He might pour through me His strength, love, and power.
He has reminded me lately as I have strived with frustration, impatience, and discouragement, that my strength will get me nowhere but exhausted and defeated.
I watched one woman who could not see. God provided His eyes. I watched another woman who lost her voice. God provided His voice. If only I would yield my life completely to the Lord, I would witness just as I did in these two women how God truly supplies everything we need to live for Him.
“Not by power, nor by might, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts (Zech. 4:6 KJV).”