Where to go When You Are Tired of Trying...Trust
Tired. I'm so tired today. Perhaps it is the bleak, rolling gray clouds. Or the overwhelming mess in my house from a weekend of painting walls, but nonetheless, tired is where I'm at.
But I've been tired before.
Tired of trying to keep up the rules.
Tired of trying to do it all right.
Tired of trying to make my children holy (yes, I've even done that).
Tired of trying.
But when you finally get tired, that is the place when you finally realize you need rest.
And you begin to see that all this working and struggling in your own strength is not bringing you any closer to peace, grace, or holiness.
Then, there is only one thing left to do,
Trust.
This thing of trusting God with your life, it will change you.
It doesn't mean sitting around doing nothing, it means learning to trust God to do it in you and through you.
Living in the Spirit means that I trust God to do in me what I cannot do myself.
Our biggest problem is that we always think we can do it ourselves.
How long did I labor, believeing that if I just tried harder, worked a little more, and rededicated myself to try again and again that this time it would work?
Trying harder will never get you to heaven and it will never make you more holy.
You'll never become more loving, patient, kind, unselfish or joyful by trying.
Because if you could do that you wouldn't need a Savior, you would already be one.
And there is only One who can save, One who can change you, One who died and lives again to make us finally right with God when we just could not.
But my problem, the thing that kept me from tasting the glories of grace for so long, is that I thought I could.
There is only one road into grace, the broken one.
There is only one roadblock, pride.
Pride breeds the failure complex because it glories in self when you think you've done well and falls into despair when you fail.
Pride only leads to greater failure and deeper darkness because it is rooted in self-reliance.
Self-reliance is self-trust.
And if you're trusting in yourself you will always fail.
Pride always looks within for victory instead of up to God.
Pride always seeks self-glory instead of God's glory.
Pride always pulls itself up by its bootstraps and determines to get it right next time, but humility knows that it never will.
The truth is, "God opposes the proud, but He gives grace to the humble."
How can we know the mercies of God's grace?
Only by a greater awareness of our need.
Only by being broken.
Only by finding out that what we really need is not more will-power, it's giving up altogether.
"Some are afraid of finding this deficiency in themselves, and so they never grow. Growth in grace is the only way in which we can grow, and grace, we have said, is God doing something for us. We all have the same Christ dwelling within, but revelation of some new need will lead us spontaneously to trust Him to live out His life in us in that particular. Another letting go, a fresh trusting in Christ, and another stretch of land is conquered. 'Christ my life' is the secret of enlargement, " Watchman Nee, The Normal Christian Life.
Most of us never experience the supernatural Life of Christ because we only do what we think we can handle.
We only ever live out of our strength, and our natural life, and so we never taste the greatness of His strength and His Life.
We have to come to the place where we know we cannot handle it, where we are broken, when we are finally emptied of us so that we can finally be filled with His surpassing greatness.
This is the Life of Faith.
Trust.
Trust in the only True God, the Only Savior, the only One who can do in us what we cannot.
But we'll never get to grace if we are still believing that we can.
First, we have to get tired.
Tired of trying to be our own savior, of being our kids savior, and we have to know that this thing of saving, God's got it and we never will.
Trust.
Rest in His grace today, know that He's the only one who Saves,
and if you are ready for rest, He has a place to lay your head.
But I've been tired before.
Tired of trying to keep up the rules.
Tired of trying to do it all right.
Tired of trying to make my children holy (yes, I've even done that).
Tired of trying.
But when you finally get tired, that is the place when you finally realize you need rest.
And you begin to see that all this working and struggling in your own strength is not bringing you any closer to peace, grace, or holiness.
Then, there is only one thing left to do,
Trust.
This thing of trusting God with your life, it will change you.
It doesn't mean sitting around doing nothing, it means learning to trust God to do it in you and through you.
Living in the Spirit means that I trust God to do in me what I cannot do myself.
Our biggest problem is that we always think we can do it ourselves.
How long did I labor, believeing that if I just tried harder, worked a little more, and rededicated myself to try again and again that this time it would work?
Trying harder will never get you to heaven and it will never make you more holy.
You'll never become more loving, patient, kind, unselfish or joyful by trying.
Because if you could do that you wouldn't need a Savior, you would already be one.
And there is only One who can save, One who can change you, One who died and lives again to make us finally right with God when we just could not.
But my problem, the thing that kept me from tasting the glories of grace for so long, is that I thought I could.
There is only one road into grace, the broken one.
There is only one roadblock, pride.
Pride breeds the failure complex because it glories in self when you think you've done well and falls into despair when you fail.
Pride only leads to greater failure and deeper darkness because it is rooted in self-reliance.
Self-reliance is self-trust.
And if you're trusting in yourself you will always fail.
Pride always looks within for victory instead of up to God.
Pride always seeks self-glory instead of God's glory.
Pride always pulls itself up by its bootstraps and determines to get it right next time, but humility knows that it never will.
The truth is, "God opposes the proud, but He gives grace to the humble."
How can we know the mercies of God's grace?
Only by a greater awareness of our need.
Only by being broken.
Only by finding out that what we really need is not more will-power, it's giving up altogether.
"Some are afraid of finding this deficiency in themselves, and so they never grow. Growth in grace is the only way in which we can grow, and grace, we have said, is God doing something for us. We all have the same Christ dwelling within, but revelation of some new need will lead us spontaneously to trust Him to live out His life in us in that particular. Another letting go, a fresh trusting in Christ, and another stretch of land is conquered. 'Christ my life' is the secret of enlargement, " Watchman Nee, The Normal Christian Life.
Most of us never experience the supernatural Life of Christ because we only do what we think we can handle.
We only ever live out of our strength, and our natural life, and so we never taste the greatness of His strength and His Life.
We have to come to the place where we know we cannot handle it, where we are broken, when we are finally emptied of us so that we can finally be filled with His surpassing greatness.
This is the Life of Faith.
Trust.
Trust in the only True God, the Only Savior, the only One who can do in us what we cannot.
But we'll never get to grace if we are still believing that we can.
First, we have to get tired.
Tired of trying to be our own savior, of being our kids savior, and we have to know that this thing of saving, God's got it and we never will.
Trust.
Rest in His grace today, know that He's the only one who Saves,
and if you are ready for rest, He has a place to lay your head.
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