Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Strength





““The Lord is my strength and my song;
he has become my salvation. He is my God,
and I will praise Him.”
 Exodus 15:2 (NIV)


As a child, whenever I felt weak, I wanted to give up. I found myself just ignoring things that pertained to the particular activity. I craved lots of encouragement.

As a young mother, I attended an area meeting of the church I attended. My church hosted the sister churches in the county and one or two in the next county to the north.  The meeting was set up with small workshops. One of the titles referred to a Spiritual gifts survey.

The title drew me in. I answered a series of what seemed to be unrelated questions about how we viewed certain situations. We then scored the surveys.

One of my gifts was that of encouragement. At that time, I didn't do anything with these results. A few years later, the Sunday school class I was in studied all the Spiritual gifts and took the survey again.  My scores showed basically the same results.

A few years later, I found myself repeatedly asking a question, “Where does an encourager go to get encouragement?” All at once, I realized I had answered my own question. The answer to my question-“ An encourager gets the encouragement he or she needs when they go to God.”

With my Fibromyalgia, when I find myself stressed my limbs begin to ache and I feel weak. I recently began a project that caused me worry and resultant pain. I sent a prayer SOS to a group of people who pray for my writing ministry. I posted a response on the Facebook page of a writer/editor/ speaker who is in my ‘friend’ list. His question that day was; “How can I pray for you?”

God, through His Word and His answers to prayer, gives us strength to face the difficult times we face in this life. Also, God sometimes places people in our path to help us through times we don’t understand.

Dear Father God; Thank You for being my strength, for standing beside me as I encounter things of this fallen world.  I thank You for the encouragement found in Your Word. I praise Your name. In the name of Jesus, I pray. AMEN


Where Could I Go But to the Lord

12 comments:

  1. Hi Cecelia! What a question that is...how do I get the encouragement to be an encourager? God has given you a wonderful gift to lift up others, and here you are, doing just that. In your words here and in your visiting your other blog friends (like me!) you help us all to be encouraged.

    What a great friend you have, who asked how he could pray for you. That is so much like Jesus, who would ask "What do you want?" The Lord will give you what you need, Cecelia. He needs you to be his words and comfort, so he'll pay attention to you always!

    Happy Thursday :)
    Ceil

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    1. Thank you, Ceil. I have learned over the years that we have to rely on the Lord to have the strength to be victorious over the situations that cause us worry. One of the praise songs we sing in church has a chorus that says,"Strength will rise as we wait upon the Lord."

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  2. Thank you for sharing your story! I don't think I knew that you have this condition.

    I'm happy that you know where to go to get fueled back up. Waving!

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    1. Rhonda: Thank you for stopping in. The great thing is all of God's children can go to Him with any need they have and He will listen and guide them through

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  3. Hi Quiet Spirit -

    It's wise to have prayer back up. When I'm facing a particularly trying situation, I always ask my friends and mom to pray. What a difference it makes!

    Blessings,
    Susan :)

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    Replies
    1. Hello, Susan. Thank you for stopping by. I have found that, for ministries, prayer is the vital first step in making progress The seven sister churches in our town had a day of community outreach today. It was a day well spent. I believe lots of prayer went into the planning.

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  4. Great devotion. May God bless your writing!

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    1. Thank you, Becky. I have had a great day in the Lord. Blessings upon you and your family.

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  5. I love it when God sends an encourager my way, since I often find myself giving out, and become depleted. He's used you several times to help me through the day or week. Thanks for being a cheerleader!

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  6. Jeanette: Thank you for stopping in. And thank you for your warm thoughts.

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