What it means to be strong

I've always tried to be strong in one way or another--always trying to be a hero. But life has thus far taught me about how weak I really am. It's so much easier to talk about strength when things are going well, and when my emotions are into it. When I feel joy from the Lord, it's easy to see how I would always want to keep on pressing on after God.

Lately though, when I was pretty bummed, my emotions were pretty much suffocating me. I reminded myself that I needed to be strong, that I really did want to keep on following God and serving God even if I didn't feel like I did at the time. And so I prayed a lot for joy and peace from God to keep motivating me onwards, but it didn't feel like I was getting any--my emotions were still haywire and all. Though I reminded myself that I needed to be strong and continue onwards, it was so hard because I didn't see any reason why.

When I prayed for strength though, God really answered that prayer. I didn't think I had the strength to do stuff, but God filled me with strength that I didn't have. It's nothing new in terms of ideas, but really learning what it means for God to be the strength of my heart--that's a big blessing.

1 John 2

14...I have written to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.

Psalm 70:5

But I am needy and afflicted

Hasten to me, O God

You are my help and my deliverer

O Lord, do not delay!

An encouraging thing I read in a book! Describes me a lot

Talking with God by Francois Fenelon

Undue Attachment to Feelings

"Those who are committed to God only so far as they enjoy pleasure and consolation resemble those who followed the Lord, not to hear his teaching, but because they ate of the loaves and were filled. They are ready to say with St. Peter, "Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; and let us put up three shelters." But they do not know what they say. After being intoxicated with the joys of the mountain, they deny the Son of God and refuse to follow him to Calvary. Not only do they desire delights, but they seek illuminations also. The mind is curious to behold, while the heart demands to be filled with soft and flattering emotions. Is this dying to self? Is this the way in which the just shall live by faith?

They desire to have unusual revelations that may be regarded as supernatural gifts and a mark of the special favor of God. Nothing is so flattering to self-love. All the greatness of the world at once could not so inflate the heart. These supernatural gifts nourish in secret the life of the old nature. It is an ambition of the most refined character, since it is wholly spiritual. But it is merely ambition, a desire to feel, to enjoy, to possess God and his gifts, to behold his light, to discern spirits, to prophesy--in short, to be an extraordinarily gifted person. For the enjoyment of revelations and delights leads the soul little by little toward a secret coveting of all these things.

Yet the apostle shows us a more excellent way, for which he inspires us to a holy ambition: it is the way of love which seeks not its own. It is less in search of pleasure than of God, whose will it longs to fulfill. If this love finds pleasure in devotion, it does not rest in it, but makes it serve to strengthen its weakness...

We must not be always children, always demanding heavenly consolations...Our early joys served well to attract us and to draw us away from unrefined and worldly pleasures by others of a purer kind. They led us to a life of prayer and commitment. But to demand to be in a state of constant enjoyment takes away the feeling of the cross, and to live in a fervor of devotion that continually keeps paradise open--this is not dying up the cross and becoming nothing.

This life of revelations and sensible delights is a very dangerous snare if we become so attached to it as to desire nothing more....for they mistake the portico of the temple for the very sanctuary itself. They desire the death of their unrefined external passion, so that they may lead a delicious life of self-satisfaction within. Hence, so much infidelity and disappointment occurred even among those who appeared the most fervent and most devoted. Those who have talked the loudest of death to self, of the darkness of faith, are often the most surprised and discouraged when they really experience these things and their consolation is taken away.

...We think, while the pleasure lasts, that we shall never desert God. We say in our prosperity that we shall never be moved. But the moment our intoxication is over, we give up for lost...Naked faith alone is a sure guard against illusion. When our foundation is not upon imagination, feeling, pleasure, or extraordinary illumination; when we rest upon God only in unpretentious and plain faith, in the simplicity of the gospel receiving the consolations which he sends, but dwelling in none of them; when we abstain from judging and ever strive to be obedient, believing that it is easy to be deceived and others may be able to set us right--in short, always acting with simplicity and an upright intention, following the light of the faith in each present moment--then we are indeed in a way not easily subject to illusion.

...The author of My Imitation of Christ (Book III) tells us that if God takes away our inward delights, it should be our pleasure to remain pleasureless...It is our impatience under the trial, the restlessness of a pampered and dainty nature, a search for some support for self-love, and a secret return to self after our consecration to God. O God, where are they who do not stop in the way? If they persevere to the end, they shall receive a crown of Life!"

Well, at any rate, I was feeling that I depended upon peace and joy to motivate me to press on. I guess, since becoming saved and tasting of the goodness of the Lord, I thought that life would always be good. And I guess, as a general rule, it's always harder to keep motivated when one doesn't feel so good. So this definitely encouraged me to take a hard look at my motivations, and what I was really seeking after, but also to be encouraged, that through it all, we have to keep on pressing on!

Ephesians 6

¹³Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm.

Always Pray

I talk too much.

I talk too much and act too little. I was in a group, asking for prayer about something close to my heart, and when someone asked me if I had been praying about it, I said, sort of, but not really. He told me, "What have you been doing? This is a serious topic, so get serious about prayer."

That's really the truth. I talk too much about how important prayer is, or how much I need prayer, but when it comes down to it, I'm not really serious about what I say, or else I would do something about it.

I wasn't serious about prayer. I would say the words, and the issues I would pray about would be important to me, but I wasn't serious about the words I would say. It was like they were dead--like I didn't really expect anyone to hear them. Kind of like I was just fulfilling a duty by saying the words--that God would hear anyway, I just told people I would pray for things here and there, so that's why I had to actually say them.

Lately, I've come to learn more about the difference between saying the words, and really praying. I'm serious about prayer nowadays--I believe that God is listening, I believe that I am pleading with God, and I believe that what I do is important and absolutely necessary, because I realize that I need to pray. Nowadays, prayer is all that I can do. I pray for God to help me, to fill my heart, and to teach me His comfort and His love. And I think that when we pray seriously, we come to a better understanding of all the things that we cannot do.

I used to think that I could force myself to do quite a few things, and it seems like I can. But somehow, praying about those same things makes me realize that I actually can't, and actually don't want to. The truth is that I can pretend to be able to do things--pretend to be strong. I can force myself to move on, live life.

But nowadays, when I pray, I pray with desperation. Because unless God makes things real to me, unless He makes Himself real to me, there is absolutely nothing I can do except pretend and try my best to live my life, but that's not real. Only God can truly save, and that's the reason why I pray.

Weak...again!

Just went to this retreat over fall break, and one of the speakers at the retreat said something like

"It is important to know how weak we are because then we know how strong we really are"

I guess, I've always been kind of a weak person, and I've thought that was okay and all. I'm not quite sure why I thought that was okay--but I guess it was just making excuses for myself. I thought it was kind of biblical to be weak, haha, but I think that the main thing that I didn't realize was that we're not meant to stay weak, but rather see our weakness, and then find the strength of the Lord.

Hence the verse, "Be strong and courageous," or something like "Act like men, be strong."

I believe that God has to take us to that place of ultimate weakness, however, for it to truly happen. And I don't think I'm there yet. It's true that I already see some of my weaknesses, and know that I'm not strong at all, but I don't really understand how desperate I really am, or helpless I really am without God. I know it inside my head, but I haven't really felt it in my heart.

When I realized this after the message, I was just praying to God to bring me to that point where I could fully depend upon Him because the more that I can depend and delight in Him, the better off I will be because He is worthy of my delight.

But something I think God told me in the middle of my prayers is that I'm not ready to be taken to that point of ultimate desperation. God will lead me there at some point in my life, and I'm sure it's not going to be very enjoyable when I'm actually there (the little moments of despair that I already go through are already not very enjoyable), but if God rushed the process, I would probably be destroyed before anything else.

I remember last year, when I prayed that God would break me because I felt like I wasn't really growing fast enough. I felt that my walk with Him had grown stagnant--I wasn't feeling a real struggle at the time, and so I thought it would be good to ask for Him to break me. And what I think He told me was "Later." I'd just recently gone through something at the time, so I'm pretty sure, looking back, that I wasn't ready for another struggle.

Sometimes I get impatient with my walk. I'm impatient by nature, and would like to be mature by now, and am frustrated at times by my own immaturity. But it's great that God's in control of my spiritual growth, and not me. He knows how fast I really ought to grow, and He knows what trials I can actually take at the time. All we have to do is obey Him at each step of the way.

And someday, I think that I will come to that point where I am like Jacob wrestling with God by the river, knowing that I am really done for. All my hopes, and all my dreams, and all my life are nothing, and there is nothing that I can do to save myself. And at that point, all I will be able to do is turn to God, and that is when He will fill me completely with His strength.