Thursday, July 21, 2011

I'm not a Super Christian

Fellow handmaidens of the LORD God Almighty, our lives are full of so many things which keep our minds and bodies busy.  The LORD fashioned women, in general, to be able to handle a myriad tasks at the same time.  Sometimes we go through our full life swimmingly, and other times we are so overloaded it is like swimming against the flow.

Do not lose heart, dear readers.  We are not meant to be Super Christians.  We are meant to sit at His feet and rest in Him even though we have much to do, and we need to lean on Him in all we do.  If we try to do everything ourselves we will eventually fail.  What we need to learn is to allow our strength to come from Him.

As a side note: I want to be a “Mary”! But how can I do this if I am such a “Martha”?

~~Mary was seated at the Lord’s feet, listening to His every word, but Martha was distracted with all her preparations~~ Luke 10:38-42

Along with every day life, which is full of many joys, there will be difficulties, sadness, and great sorrows.  Now add to our own prayer list all the people we know who also have joys and sorrows.  Each of our prayer lists are already full of our own issues to cry out to the LORD and so now when we add on every one else’s prayers requests it can be so overwhelming. We can completely give up praying or as I think of it, we go into survival mode and just plain forget to pray.  This can only lead to more feelings of guilt because we have forgotten to pray for those we care about, especially when we have expressed to them that we will indeed pray for them.

In my life I have found that when I am focusing in on my own sorrows and my other issues, I can certainly begin to spiral into despair or just self pity.  I can definitely pray for my issues, but then I need to move on to the other people whom I know and begin to pray for each of them.

I am not a Super Christian!  I forget to pray many times.  I can have days where I pray faithfully for others, I can have days where I am temporarily set free from my own agonies that I forget to pray for others, I can be so full of grief that I do not know how to pray, and I can have prayed for a long standing situation for such a great length of time that I can only cry out to the LORD in anguish.

“…I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin.  For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I do not want to do…” Romans 7:14-25

My encouragement to you, fellow handmaiden, is to not give up on praying for others.  I so often feel completely forgotten in my agony, and then the LORD blesses me as He brings into my path someone who shares that they been praying for me.  To hear such a thing is like beautiful music!  Someone else is crying out to God for me!!

On the other hand, I can express to another person that I have been lifting them up to the LORD in prayer, and I will see the same excitement in their eyes that I must have when told that someone is praying for me.  It is a beautiful thing.

How blessed we are to have the Holy Spirit understand our groans even when we do not know what words to use.

How blessed we are to know that God inclines to us and hears our cries.

How blessed we are to know our almighty God cares for us so much that He sent His Son so we could have such a precious relationship with Him.

How blessed we are to be able to intercede for others.

How blessed we are to know that others can intercede for us.

Your prayers are so important.

Pray for others~~~ stand in the gap for them and glorify the LORD!

2 comments:

Emily said...

That was so incredibly encouraging. Thank you so much. It has captured so much of the way I've felt in recent weeks!

The Piper's Wife said...

Thank you, Emily, for your comment. I am so blessed that it encouraged you.

This post came about when a person made it sound like I had it all together~~~insinuating that even though I am living in "chaos" that I am able to handle it all because I am a super Christian. Far from it. I am always at His feet, so maybe this is the difference she sees in me.

May each of us run to Him faster than we did the last time :oD