““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