Resting in His Strength: My Journey

Hey Guys! How’s it going? I hope great and not too shabby. So for Godly Hacks Tuesday we talked about all of what we need to know about how to operate in God's Strength and today I’d really like to take it a step further as promised. For me personally, learning to not operate in my own strength is something God is really dealing with me on and has been dealing with me on for quite some years now. So I guess more than a message tonight, I’d like to share a little bit of that journey with you and I hope it blesses and ministers to you.

Something my older sister tends to tease me a lot about is that I have the tendency to want to get ahead of God. She's been saying this to me for years but it took a while to understand what she really meant. She would always say to me when I started acting like the control freak that I used to be (and I am currently trying to kill) “Wow you really do love all your ducks in a row, glistening and shinning” and sadly it was and is a little bit still true.

I would describe myself in terms of taking on tasks and just life as a get it done type of personality a.k.a a Type A personality. There’s the excessive ambition, penchant for multi-tasking, serious impatience and time consciousness (not like being early to places but just a general obsessiveness with project and goal timelines.) Oh and there’s also the anxiety, disdain for delay and a general over-achieving mindset. Shake all of that into one 5 ft. 3 Human and you have a somewhat obsessive, slightly neurotic person, always trying to control things and take matters into her own hands.

A few years back, I used to be so bad that if I didn’t get a blogpost out before the desired time, back when I used to run my fashion blog, I would have a full-blown meltdown. Things just had to be done at the time in which I had imagined and dreamt that they would be done. Any other way felt like people or things were trying to ruin my life. In retrospect, it was a fairly horrible way to live and a very emotionally driven approach to living life which is the exact opposite of what we are called to do. Everyone who has walked with God diligently for some time knows something which I didn't know back then and that is that God is even more attached to His own perfect timing. To walk with God and cling to your own non-spirit inspired timelines; trying to make your own destiny happen is one of the most frustrating and strife-filled experiences a Believer can possibly have.

One of the first things I had to come to understand (and it took years for me to even get it on the base level) was that my life is not my own. God had to teach me slowly (because I was a little slow on the uptake) that the new life I had been giving was no longer about living the life I desired to live but about surrendering to the life He had called me to live. I was over there trying to fit God and His plans for my life into my timeline and all of Heaven was there ROTFL with laughter.

I know someone is reading this and thinking, well what does all of this have to do with resting in His strength? The thing though is once you understand that you are walking a path God has designed and mapped out for you, soon enough you realize that there’s no way you can walk that path successfully in your own strength. God’s plans, God’s strength. It's a joint package.

The other things God really had to drum into my ears are surmised in this scripture

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” says the LORD. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth so are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.” – Isaiah 55: 8-9

As vivid and colourful as my imagination is and as ambitious and creative as my visions and dreams can be, God’s vision and dreams for my life are a million times better and more colourful. More so, His path is free from the possibility of emptiness or feelings of futility at the end of the road. God was trying to get me to not just know but believe that the plans He had for me were much bigger than I could possibly dream of. He needed me to understand that to step into the fullness of who I was created to be, contrary to human impulses, I had to surrender control of my life and trust Him every step of the way. It’s exactly like Pastor Mike Todd of the Transformation church said. “God will listen to you pray about your plans but He will only fund His plans.” God needed me to align with His plans for my life so I could finally stop struggling and start soaring in His strength.

This #Epic statement by Pastor Mike Todd helped me understand why for soo many years, I felt like I was striving to succeed, striving to build things for myself, and striving through every milestone that I desired. Now, I can look back and compare notes, being in a season of my life where God is just causing things to come to me and realize that truly “It is not by might nor power but by His Spirit.” (Zechariah 4:16). I have and I am continually resigning myself to that ‘Jesus take the wheel’ life. Down to what I wear for occasions and business meetings,  I have learnt and I’m still learning, that the more I walk in alignment with God’s plans for my life, and the more I lean on the Holy Spirit for guidance, the easier and more beautiful life can be.

Guys, you have to understand that you are not your own and you cannot do the enormous-bigger-than-your-biggest-dreams things God will have you do, operating in your own strength. If you would even scratch the surface of the awesomeness God has called you to, the only way to do so is in His own strength. One of my new favourite prayer points is that Men will look at me and say concerning me, that no 25year old can do these things unless God be with her. (John 3:2). Time to let the striving cease, just rest in His Strength.