Today @ The Gathering we continued in our current series. “The Power To Prevail,” with an installment entitled, “Turning Your Can’ts Into Cans.”
This is a really serious concept because so many people you hear talking, talk about their can’ts; not their cans: what they might do if other things were available. The truth is, you can’t build a life on the negative, or a can’t. But we so early learn what we can’t do.
We talked about the three ways we learn how to live a small life, or a can’t life:
1. We learn what we can’t do by listening to our critics; and there are plenty of them out there.
2. We learn by living with comparisons that are false.
3. We learn by losing artificial competitions that we don’t need to be in to start with.
We used the Romans 8:28-31 passage as a group affirmation; that we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, and those who have been called. The truth of the matter is, not everyone can make that statement with any degree of assurance. But if you are a follower of Jesus, you should be able to say, “And we know.” The word know there is the idea of knowing by experience. You can know a thing objectively as a piece of information, but when you live with it, it becomes a part of you. The question is, how do you do that? How do you translate what you hear from a speaker, or read from a book, into real life? I’ve found the most helpful thing to do is to make strong affirmations.
Here are the three affirmations that we talked about today:
1. With God’s help, I will excel at what I must do with what’s available. No excuses, no copping out, and no living someone else’s life. I will excel at what I must do; not what someone else must do, but what I must do with what is available, trusting that God will make what else I need available in the future.
2. With God’s help I will derail the devices of difficult people. Remember, hurt people hurt people. Much of what you experience in the way of broken relationships has nothing to do with you, but with what other people already bring to the table. You deal with this by understanding these two statements: If you live reacting to the hurt of hurting people you’re going to be frustrated. But if you live by acting in light of the hurt of hurting people, you’ll be fulfilled.
3. With God’s help, I will prevail against prevailing wisdom. Remember, the facts ain’t always the facts, and experts have been proven wrong more times than not. Today is not the time to be involved in making world globes. Boundaries change and they move constantly in the real world. And that’s also true in the spiritual world.
We also emphasized again, our Call To Prayer on Monday, March 9th. This is going to be an awesome night. I hope you are planning to attend and bring someone with you. If you know people who are without jobs, have been laid-off, are in fear of being laid-off, who need prayer, who are serious about getting serious with God in prayer, bring them with you. You’ll be glad you did.