Sometimes we pray "Father this is more than I can handle or I don't want to deal with this anymore, please take it away from me." I know that I have prayed that prayer many times in my life. If we are honest we may have even prayed that prayer(in secret) about things that we like but we know are not good for us?
As I think about it today, I believe God, in His wisdom does take away those things that we truly can not handle. But more often than not He empowers us with the strength and wisdom to give up those things that are not good for us and cause us to stumble needlessly.
I believe sometimes we get caught up in waiting for God to remove obstacles from our path when He is challenging us to choose a different path. Give up our way and go the way He is leading us. That is not to say that there will never be obstacles on the path that God has chosen for us because there will be. The difference is as we go through them they become smaller and smaller, our God becomes bigger and bigger, and our faith grows stronger and stronger. So as our faith, strength, and wisdom matures in Him we can give up praying that he take away all of our obstacles and say thank you for bringing us through because in the end It's All Good!
About Me
- life answers
- Long Beach, CA, United States
- Maisha is a registered Marriage and Family Therapist Intern with Turning Point Counseling. She has a passion for helping people achieve wholeness through acceptance and loving themselves as they are understanding that God created us all with awesome potential. Growth and change can be very difficult, but “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me” Philippians4:13. She believes that the foundation of achieving and maintaining healthy relationships is congruent communication. Maisha has worked with a culturally and clinically diverse client base that includes: couples, substance abuse, intimacy issues, and domestic violence. She also worked with problems such as anger management, parenting, depression, anxiety, assertiveness/self esteem, grief and loss, self harm, divorce, family, illness, and disabilities.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
Sunday, May 9, 2010
How large is your Vessel?
OMG!! What a great message from the very heart of The Father I was blessed to receive today. Although there were many others present in the 8am service at my church this morning, God delivered this man Pastor Mensa Otabil all the way from Accra Ghana on this day, Mother's day to drop this message directly down into the the spirit of this mother.
Whew! I've already said a mouthful but I hope that you can feel the heat through your computer screen as you read this because I am ON FIRE after this word!
Go with me for a moment to 2 Kings 4:1-7. Here you find a widow woman who sought the profit Elisha for help, you see she was a widow, she was in debt (sound familiar?), and on top of that her sons were about to be traded into slavery to the creditor.
But watch this instead of loaning her money, or giving her an answer he in fact asked her some very important questions: >"What shall I do for you?","What have you of sale value in the house?"strong>, giving the woman an opportunity to take part in her own recovery.
Now her first response was one of hopelessness: "Your handmaid has nothing in the housebut the second part represented hope "Except/but a jar of oil". How many of us know that a BUT inserted in the middle of a sentence pretty much cancels out everything that was said before it? Ex.:"you look great today, I love your hair and your outfit is very nice, but it's not really your color.". The but canceled out all the nice things that were said before it. Much like with this widow woman I have nothing, but this jar of oil. God can make our buts abundant (lol no pun intended). Elisha told the woman to go out into the neighborhood and collect vessels, not just a few but as many as she could find, bring them into her home, and shut the door behind her. In obedience to the word of the profit she began to fill vessel after vessel with this one jar of oil. In the end she had enough to sell to pay off her debt and still enough left over for her and her sons to live off of.
What is the message then?
Friends our "oil" our gifts, talents, God's anointing on our life, is not the problem. The problem is the vessel. To put in it in the words of Pastor Otabil: "her container was limited, but the content (her oil) was limitless".
Our anointing, our talents, gifts, and capacity is only limited by the container of our thoughts, fears, and faith.
How do we enlarge our vessels? study God's word(education), network(build systems that are inspirational and supportive of our growth), Develop(our assets, ideas, and abilities, apprenticeship(sit under people who are doing what we want to do and learn from them).Begin to pour our unique abilities and talents (oil) into these borrowed vessels and watch God expand our capacity.
Think about this, the next time you are drinking a bottle of water, look at that bottle in terms of content (the water) and capacity(the bottle). The water is a flowing body which before it was captured and put into this bottle was a limitless flowing stream, I'm sure if given a choice the water would not have chosen to be limited to a 500ml capacity. But because it is contained in a vessel that is only able to hold 500ml it has no choice but to be limited to that capacity.
Will you limit God's content in your life? How large is your vessel? May God Bless us as we grow
Whew! I've already said a mouthful but I hope that you can feel the heat through your computer screen as you read this because I am ON FIRE after this word!
Go with me for a moment to 2 Kings 4:1-7. Here you find a widow woman who sought the profit Elisha for help, you see she was a widow, she was in debt (sound familiar?), and on top of that her sons were about to be traded into slavery to the creditor.
But watch this instead of loaning her money, or giving her an answer he in fact asked her some very important questions: >"What shall I do for you?","What have you of sale value in the house?"strong>, giving the woman an opportunity to take part in her own recovery.
Now her first response was one of hopelessness: "Your handmaid has nothing in the housebut the second part represented hope "Except/but a jar of oil". How many of us know that a BUT inserted in the middle of a sentence pretty much cancels out everything that was said before it? Ex.:"you look great today, I love your hair and your outfit is very nice, but it's not really your color.". The but canceled out all the nice things that were said before it. Much like with this widow woman I have nothing, but this jar of oil. God can make our buts abundant (lol no pun intended). Elisha told the woman to go out into the neighborhood and collect vessels, not just a few but as many as she could find, bring them into her home, and shut the door behind her. In obedience to the word of the profit she began to fill vessel after vessel with this one jar of oil. In the end she had enough to sell to pay off her debt and still enough left over for her and her sons to live off of.
What is the message then?
Friends our "oil" our gifts, talents, God's anointing on our life, is not the problem. The problem is the vessel. To put in it in the words of Pastor Otabil: "her container was limited, but the content (her oil) was limitless".
Our anointing, our talents, gifts, and capacity is only limited by the container of our thoughts, fears, and faith.
How do we enlarge our vessels? study God's word(education), network(build systems that are inspirational and supportive of our growth), Develop(our assets, ideas, and abilities, apprenticeship(sit under people who are doing what we want to do and learn from them).Begin to pour our unique abilities and talents (oil) into these borrowed vessels and watch God expand our capacity.
Think about this, the next time you are drinking a bottle of water, look at that bottle in terms of content (the water) and capacity(the bottle). The water is a flowing body which before it was captured and put into this bottle was a limitless flowing stream, I'm sure if given a choice the water would not have chosen to be limited to a 500ml capacity. But because it is contained in a vessel that is only able to hold 500ml it has no choice but to be limited to that capacity.
Will you limit God's content in your life? How large is your vessel? May God Bless us as we grow
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