Journal entry reminding myself of the narrow road.

Thank God for the hard.

Don’t just begrudgingly accept the circumstances and try to push through in your own strength.  Acknowledge the difficult and the seemingly insurmountable.  In doing so, you take the first step away from pride and self-sufficiency and at the same time step towards dependency on God and submission to His greater will and authority.

It’s in the hard and the difficult and the insurmountable and the pressure and the stress and the “I don’t feel like it” where I can enter into a state of weakness that allows for God’s power to rest on me.

It’s in these places that I can say “I can do _____ through Christ who strengthens me.”  In that place and posture, my “I can” is not a self-sufficient, worldly, grind it out “I can.”  It’s the result of a humble admission that “I can’t” (if I want to remain in union with Him – because I certainly “can” if the goal is get the job done and complete the task – but at what cost).

And then out of that “I can’t” there comes a “but He can” and therefore “I can.”  That’s the order.

I can’t.  He can.  Therefore I can.

Miss the order and risk pride creeping in which is always lurking, waiting to not only give you words of self-affirmation upfront, but also a prize at the end when you’ve overcome and done it on your own.  This builds and builds, time after time, until I choose humility and submission, or I am humbled outside my choosing.