ometimes God allows us to hit the bottom in order to discover that He’s the rock at the bottom. Gideon faced an army of 135,000 troops with just 32,000 of his own soldiers. And 22,000 of them left the battlefield and went home when he offered them the chance. Do the math. Gideon’s thinking, “there’s no way we can win!”
Then God explains: “The people who are with you are too many for Me to give Midian into their hands, for Israel would become boastful, saying, “My own power has delivered me’” (Judges 7:2 NAS/NLT). There it is again, the age-old battle of ego that we all fight daily. It is why the Lord’s Prayer ends with: “Thine is the Kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen” (Matthew 6:13 KJV/NLT).
Where does our power come from? God! Who should the glory for our accomplishments go to? God! How long does this arrangement last? Forever!
God had to break Jacob of self-sufficiency so the “Israel” within him could come out. Sometimes God has to take you down before He can rise you up. Moses was called the meekest man on earth. But it took forty years of living like a shepherd in the wilderness to detox him of pride and get him submitted to God. Only then was he ready to stand before Pharaoh and perform miracles that demonstrated God’s power - and vindicated Moses!
Brokenness doesn’t mean being a wimp, suffering from an inferiority complex or having a case of low self-esteem. No, brokenness means praying, “Lord if this job is going to get done and done right, You’re going to have to do it through me, so my trust is in You.”
e don’t always know the reason for our trials, but God revealed to Paul the reason for his “thorn in the flesh.” It was to keep him from being “exalted” (see 2 Corinthians 12:7 KJV/NLT). success can be intoxicating, and intoxicated people aren’t known for being too bright or trustworthy!
What happens when you get a thorn in your flesh? It hurts and you’ll let everything else go while you focus on removing it. Three times Paul prayed for God to remove the thorn, but God had another plan. You see, God is at His strongest when we are at our weakest. When Paul discovered that God’s power in his life was tied to the thorn that afflicted him, he responded, “I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities… For whenever I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10 NRS/NLT). In other words, “If it’s for my good, bring it on, Lord!”
If you have a thorny person in your life from whom you’ve prayed to be delivered and it hasn’t happened, maybe God wants you to experience His grace and power through dealing with that person. But you won’t experience this until you move from pain to praise.
The Bible speaks about “the sacrifice of praise to God” (Hebrews 13:15 KJV/NLT). A sacrifice means that something has to die on somebody’s altar. So if you want to experience God’s grace and power in your life, you must be willing to die to self-interest, ego, and independence. There is nothing wrong with asking God to remove your thorn. But when your prayer for deliverance turns to praise, you’re on your way to receiving His power, because God is giving you grace.
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The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit.
Psalm 51:17 (NIV/NLT)
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