Discouraged: Part 2

Galatians 6:9 says, "Let us not become weary in doing good, for in the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up."

Weary means exhausted in strength, endurance, vigor, or freshness. Having one's patience, tolerance, or pleasure exhausted. Exhausted means to tire extremely or completely. Become means to come into existence.

How many of you can say that you are all of the above or have been at one time? The responsibilities that we carry from day to day can make us weary in doing good. Sometimes I wonder how many more times will I have to tell my children to pick up their toys so we do not fall on them, please wait until we say the blessing before eating, be kind to your brother/sister, please talk one at a time so I can hear you, on and on and on.

God gave us these blessings and knew that we could handle the task before us. Will it be easy? No, but we have a responsibility to train our children. I love the part that says, "in the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up."  We have to persevere even in the hard times of parenting and disciplining our children. We must keep working and TRUST GOD for the results.

I have learned that it takes work to discipline my children. When I go to sit down on the couch to relax I have 2 choices when a problem arises: really deal with my children in disciplining them or just allow them to keep on because I do not feel like getting off the couch.

So today, I encourage you to not become weary, you will reap a harvest in due time!

Discouraged

2 Corinthians 12:9 says, "But he said to me, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness, so that Christ's power may rest in me."

 

A little background on this passage: Paul had a thorn in his flesh. His thorn was a messenger from Satan sent to torment him. Paul pleaded with the Lord to remove the thorn. Although God did not remove Paul's physical affliction, He promised to demonstrate His power in Paul.

 

I want to point out a few things here:

 

1. "My grace is sufficient for you."

Grace is unmerited divine assistance given humans for their regeneration or sanctification.

Sufficient means enough to meet the needs of a situation.

 

This means that God's "divine assistance" is enough to meet the needs of my situation.

 

2. "For my power is made perfect in weakness."

God's power is perfect or without defect when I am weak.

 

3. "Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness, so that Christ's power may rest in me."

Boast means to "the act or an instance of boasting:brag." How many times do we hear people "brag" about their weakness? Not so much! Maybe it's time we start so that Christ can do His perfect work through us!

 

So many times, we get discouraged because we cannot make something happen the way we want it to happen, but Paul is saying it is a good thing to be weak. When we are weak, God's power is made perfect. We are better to be weak and relying on God and His PERFECT power than ourselves.

 

As a parent we have SO many decisions to make from what to eat for dinner to discipline that it is easy to get discouraged when we do not see immediate change. We have to rely on God and His perfect power to step in and do it's work. We cannot do this alone. If we want to see lasting change, we have to rely on God to transform our hearts and our children's hearts' from the inside-out.