His strength, your will.

My spirit is king was our topic last week as we talked about letting our spirit take charge since we know that our spirit hears from God and is where God lives. Have you ever looked at the Bible and some of the things God asks us to do or not do and think, “That sounds hard”? Well, we’ve all been there. The standard of the Bible is hard and it is impossible to meet especially if you are doing it on your own. 

Fortunately for us, we have God living on the inside of us. “The Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you. And just as God raised Christ Jesus from the dead, he will give life to your mortal bodies by this same Spirit living within you,” Romans 8:11.

And we all know this famous verse from the Apostle Paul, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,” Philippians 4:13. So sometimes when God asks us to do something, we look at it from a soul-ish perspective. We try to reason it out in our heads and the answer is, either it is too hard or it is impossible. God says we are to love our enemies. There’s a lot of things I want to do to my enemies, loving them ain’t one of them. I’m being honest. But as children of God, we are led by the Spirit of God so instead of letting my mind tell me what I ought to do to that person who hurt me, I need to spend some time in prayer. Prayer, praise and worship are some of the ways you can engage your spirit so you can hear from God. 

I can tell you now, you cannot stay angry and be in the Presence of God. I remember once, someone blamed me for something I didn’t do and it was a mess. I was walking to my house from the train station and I was praying an angry prayer. You know- the God get them, unleash your wrath type prayers? If not, you are doing awesome! Don’t pray those prayers. Soon as I started to go down that way in my prayer, I heard the voice of the Holy Spirit asking me what the Bibles said I ought to do. I answered, “bless those who curse you”. That’s the first thing that came to mind and He helped me realise that I was cursing not blessing. So I had to change my prayer and start praying for God to bless their business, their health, their family and so on. 

Holy Spirit took over through my spirit. My soul was on the warpath but Holy Spirit came and said, “No, that’s not how we handle things”. In my own strength, I cannot genuinely bless someone who has “cursed” me or hurt me. But, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me and He is not far away. He lives right on the inside of me by His Spirit. See its His strength, but we have to choose to obey what His says. So, His strength but my choice.

He tells us what to do and He gives us the strength to do it, but it’s always up to us whether we do it or not. This is where we have to learn to let our free will serve us. Remember your soul is a servant. You get to choose whether you want to do what God says whether you think it’s hard or not. When you choose to do things His way, then His strength kicks in and what seemed hard and impossible becomes doable. You can do all things through Christ who gives you strength. You just have to make the decision to do it.

My encouragement to you is this, when God is asking you to do something, it is for your own good. I began to feel peace over the situation when I started to bless the person. I started to remember that the battle is not mine but it is the Lord’s. If you really want to win, you don’t let your soul take you on the warpath. You submit to God and follow what Holy Spirit wants you to do. God resolved everything and everything was all good in the end. But if I hadn’t obeyed, it could have prolonged the battle or ended another way.  

The world’s way is to say your piece, let them have a piece of your mind. God’s way is to hold your peace, stand still and see the salvation of the Lord. Let God do the fighting. Being aware of Christ in you, ought to pull you back from doing certain things or saying certain things. If we allow Him to speak into our situations and give us guidance on how to handle the situations we find ourselves in, we would avoid 90% of the drama in life. I was going to say 100% but sometimes drama comes and finds you, haha! But God is with you and He will guide you in all things. He is alive and living on the inside of you. He is not far off. 

Love and blessings, 

Melissa Tsingano