When My Strength Fails

Some days my pregnant body just doesn’t seem to have much energy. 

But, I can’t always sit in the recliner and put my feet up all day. 

There are things to attend to,

and I can’t go on. 

My flesh fails,

and I cry out to my great and mighty heavenly Father for help.

“ O Lord,  you now the things I have on my plate today that I must do,

please empower me to physically be able to accomplish these things, 

and give me Your grace to get through it graciously. 

May  I glorify you in it all.”

You know what He did…heard my cry and strengthened me for the day.

9 pm that night I am folding a couchful of laundry and getting children ready for bed.

  My teenage daughter lays on the floor,” Mama, you are amazing, I don’t know how you do it.”  She was exhausted from cooking a delicious dinner and cleaning up, 

as well as a busy day prior to dinner.

I smile. 

She doesn’t know the plea I sent heavenward earlier, and the answer He bestowed.

I tell her.

She smooches me on the cheek.  “I love you mama.”

 

A few days later, my own mama sends me a note 

with an excerpt from my grandmother’s diary that Ann wrote in in 1950.

Apparently she was very close to her mother.

She wrote on March 8: "My precious mother died today."

She had also tucked a slip of paper in that page that is a quote from A.B. Simpson:

"When God calls us to a work far beyond our natural strength or endowments,

the emergency only throws us upon Him, 

and we will always find Him equal to the need

which His wisdom and providence have brought our way.”

 

 I see a thread being woven, between my own shortcomings, this note, 

and so many others whom I know are struggling with bumps in their road.

Many a situation pulls and tugs at us in a way our flesh

and sometimes emotion cannot withstand. 

But God is there. 

Waiting to be asked, invited.  

His Word promises: He will strengthen.

A scripture I have gone to over and over when I am weak beyond continuing,

especially in regards to helping or serving people in need when I am drained, 

is Isaiah 58:10,11

“And if thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul;

then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy darkness be as the noon day: 

And the Lord shall guide thee continually,

and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones; 

and thou shall be like a well watered garden,

and like a spring of waters whose waters fail not.”

If this is where you find yourself today,

my prayer for you is that you do not stop in your weariness,

but seek the Lord and His strength to lift you up,

whether it be for the next 10 minutes,

or the remainder of the day,

or through the trial you are in.

God loves you,

He is mighty, He will save,

He rejoices over you with joy, 

rest in his love, He rejoices over you with singing.

(From  Zeph 3:17) 

It is He that has drawn you out of His great love.  

(Jer. 31:3) 

You are daily His delight.

  (Prov. 8:30)

“My flesh and my heart fails,

but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.

  It is good for me to draw near to God,

I have put my trust in the Lord GOD that I may declare all thy works.” 

Psalm 73:26,28