Author: marquitabp

To know me is to accept me, and to love me is to help me.
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Can’t Hold You Back

So we can confidently say, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?” Hebrews 13:6 ESV

God sure has a way of doing things. I promise you, this morning I was trying to sleep an extra hour, but He wasn’t having my laziness today lol. He wanted to talk to me. So here’s what I took from that…

I teach bible study online tonight (leave a comment for details if you’re interested) and after a few texts from friends, I remembered I needed to prepare. So I’ve been doing this series called “Effectual Prayer”. Over the course of the last 2-2.5 months, we have been exploring the various types of prayer. Long story short, the prayers I have selected for tonight are Deliver Us, prayed by Hezekiah in 2 Kings 19, and Help Us, prayed by Asa in 2 Chronicles 14. In both of these situations, from the outside looking in, the circumstances these kings faced were bigger than them, and to a faithless person, bigger than any God. But in both cases, they prevailed.

I have a tendency to ratchetness at times, haha. Several songs that I need to take several seats for came to mind. First, Rick Ross…I love how I can take a poem or lyric and it remind me of where I have been and where God has brought me. Anyway, Can’t Hold Me Back has several choice words, but this part is key–enemies and ‘the enemy’ do not have the power to hold you back. No one can keep you from your God-appointed destiny but YOU. Yes weapons will form (Isaiah 54:17) but they cannot prosper unless you allow them to defeat you. You see, what you are fighting for is power and control over your mind, because that’s where the battles are lost. But the beauty of God is that He can deliver us and help us in the midst of these situations, physically, mentally, and spiritually. That’s what He did for me…fought the battle over my mind, so that I could start winning the battles that were physically challenging me.

I love how I now ‘self-police’ my thoughts. The minute I allow a foul word to exit my lips, I immediately say something to change it. Why? Because we speak our realities into existence. Sure, a child didn’t speak abuse into existence, that’s not what I’m talking about. It’s that ‘woe is me’, ‘agony, agony’ victim complex that can plague our minds and keep us stagnant, not growing and not progressing. Back to our references, had either Hezekiah or Asa decided in their humanness to attempt to fight either of these armies in their own strength, their defeats were eminent and almost certainly there would be very few descendants to speak of it. But they chose to call on God, who in all His splendor and greatness, was more than well-equipped to to handle the battles. In Hezekiah’s case, the angel of the Lord came
over the 400000+ army of Sennacherib and the next morning more than 185000 lay dead, scaring them so bad that they ran home. And with Asa, the Ethiopian army that came against them were over a million men strong.  Asa, who was a man of peace, did the only thing he knew how to do and sought God for help. Of course this ended terribly for the Ethiopians.

As these words filled my thoughts this morning, I was reminded of my tattoo (yes I have a tattoo). I got it after having survived what at the time to me was the most difficult experience to remind me of exactly this thing. Psalm 27:1 says “The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the LORD is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” It says exactly this; why fear, when you can call on God for deliverance, like I did? Why be afraid of what men, women, and the enemy say or try to do when God is your helper and deliverer? They can’t hold you back, they can’t hold you down, because God goes before you! Trust in that today!

“I praise God for what he has promised. I trust in God, so why should I be afraid? What can mere mortals do to me?” Psalm 56:4 NLT

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Crutches

It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man. Psalm 11:8 AKJV

Growing up I had the strange desire to have to use crutches. When my dad broke his ankle, my brothers and I took turns playing with the crutches. Strange things we want as kids…I wanted to have to wear a cast haha, I wanted glasses (overrated, as my brief experience resulted in a lost pair of glasses I paid for myself grrr), and I wanted braces (yet another experience I don’t miss but I often consider to further perfect my smile haha). But now as an adult and having had to use them myself after a foot injury and the ugly boot that ensued…crutches are a blessing and a curse all at once.

I guess I’m not meant to find that devotion I wrote…bummer. Anyway, I have had the tendency in life to seek guidance from others. As a consequence, I tend to get dependent and reliant that those people will always be a resource for me. God ALWAYS has a way of snatching the crutches back from me. You see the downside to using crutches for too long is that you become dependent on them, so much that you get comfortable and complacent where you are. You stop challenging and pushing yourself to do better, until you get into a position where you feel stuck. Ah yes, in the past, I got to that place quite often. It was like finally one day God got tired of me and told me enough was enough and started snatching the crutches away–the people I went to in order to seek Him, instead of praying and going to Him for myself. Isn’t that why Jesus died, so that we are no longer separated from the Father? There is no longer a need for sacrifices–well maybe sacrificing time here and there to truly spend that time with God.

And it would happen that either that person who had become my crutch would say something I didn’t agree with, hurt my feelings, or offend me in some way. Then I would go back to God for myself. Now I recognize it is the same thing happening again, some people had become my crutches in Charleston or over the years. Now that I have left, so have the crutches, and I am learning to walk on my own again, except this time hand in hand with God.

Maybe a valued friend or mentor has recently left their coveted position in your life and like me, it has left you confounded, confused, and in disbelief. Rest assured, God’s hand is stretched out to you in order for you to get through, but this time He wants you to come to Him for yourself, beyond the veil. I realize crutches are only supposed to support you in a time of weakness. But how do you know that your legs are strong enough until you try to walk without them?

“Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you. And be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”” Matthew 28:20 NLT