As Thanksgiving nears, I am reminded that food is coming. The temptation to overeat is beckoning, and I am working on my resolve to withstand the joy of stuffing my mouth and tum tum.
How many times have we told ourselves, "I've got this!" when it comes to getting in shape, eating better, saving money, or even on the spiritual side of things when it comes to meditating on the Word, journaling more, and reading more.
It seems as though when we say, "I've got this", we succeed for a while, and then the turkey comes out of the oven and all bets are off! We can become so easily sidetracked in our plans.
Spiritually, this happens a lot more than we care to admit. It's simple to hand out godly advice, to speak words about our personal growth and how far God has taken us with Him. But what happens when we mess up? It's can be humiliating and surprising to everyone who knows us. We look up one day and say, "what happened?, I was doing so well!"
I am reminded of Peter. Imagine you were there when he said these words to Jesus in Mark Chapter 14:
29 Peter spoke up, “Even if all the others reject you, I never will!”
I can easily hear those words in my mind because I know I've said them many times before to Jesus when I pray. What grand plans we make. Such great thoughts and promises we lift up to heaven. I wonder what God thinks we will puff up and say, "I've got this!"
Just a few short verses later we find Peter asleep when Jesus asked for him to stay awake and pray.
37 When Jesus came back and found the disciples sleeping, he said to Simon Peter, “Are you asleep? Can’t you stay awake for just one hour? 38 Stay awake and pray that you won’t be tested. You want to do what is right, but you are weak.”
Jesus' reprimand exposed Peter's pride. As followers of Christ we fight our own sinful nature. We make plans, but our plans fail. We make promises, but our promises are broken. Our pride motivates us more than we might care to admit.
Our desire to follow Christ is not the problem we have. The problem we have is trying to do it in our own strength. When we are constantly telling God and everyone else, "I've got this!" we are revealing our dependency on our own strength.
Here's the truth. We don't GOT this. He has it all. We need Him all the time. We need to have a humble heart when we come to Christ asking Him for that daily dose of His sweet Spirit.
With Thanksgiving on the horizon, maybe we need to make a different kind of resolution. One that doesn't involve how much food we aren't going to eat, we know we're going to fail at that on anyway. Let's turn our hearts over to Christ. Let's give everything to Him.
Let's change our phrase to "He's got this!"
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