"its the sticks and stones that wear us down, that often save our lives"
tonight i was helping with my second to last element this semester and we had a speaker with an incredible story.
to briefly tell you his story without doing it justice, the guy was abducted at gunpoint, driven to the middle of nowhere, hit over the head with a pistol, stabbed 3 or 4 times, thrown in a well, shot in the back of the lower skull, and left for dead. somehow he wasn't already dead. then while bleeding and hardly able to breath due to a pierced lung, he was able to crawl out of this well and travel about a mile down a road to get help. nothing short of a miracle that he even made it to get help and then that he lived even after getting medical attention.
one of the main points of his talk was basically that, as Christ says to paul,
My Grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9)
there's no way that a person, by themselves, could have had the strength to do what this guy did. it was only through God that he was able to make it, literally God brought [him] up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay (psalm 40). cool story. and it got me thinking...
the speaker brought up the point that we often only look to God in our times of weakness. it is in those times that we actually let Him work and amazing things can happen. as paul says in 2nd Corinthians,
so, i will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me ... for whenever i am weak, then i am strong
this all got me thinking about a mutemath song called 'break the same' (i posted lyrics from this a few posts ago). what came to my mind from this song were the following lyrics,
its the sticks and stones that wear us down
that often save our lives
its all those things in life that hurt us, that eat away at us, that we cant stand in the moment, that are exactly what we need. its all those things that make life difficult that we simply must have. 'its the sticks and stones that wear us down' that make us look to Christ, and thus ultimately save our lives.
so many people ask God (often rather angrily), why do You allow pain and suffering? a part of the answer to that question is found here. we try and do everything by ourselves all the time. to borrow from c.s. lewis, we try and set up on our own as if we had created ourselves. we think we've got it all figured out and can be happy apart from God, but we can't. it is in those times when we just can't do it ourselves that we finally learn to give up and let God, the only one who can truly fulfill us, do it through us. it is this giving up and letting God come and work in us, that God wants to teach us through our rough times.
as only tears know how we find that we all break the same and that we all need to give up and let God work in order to save our lives.
to briefly tell you his story without doing it justice, the guy was abducted at gunpoint, driven to the middle of nowhere, hit over the head with a pistol, stabbed 3 or 4 times, thrown in a well, shot in the back of the lower skull, and left for dead. somehow he wasn't already dead. then while bleeding and hardly able to breath due to a pierced lung, he was able to crawl out of this well and travel about a mile down a road to get help. nothing short of a miracle that he even made it to get help and then that he lived even after getting medical attention.
one of the main points of his talk was basically that, as Christ says to paul,
My Grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9)
there's no way that a person, by themselves, could have had the strength to do what this guy did. it was only through God that he was able to make it, literally God brought [him] up out of the pit of destruction, out of the miry clay (psalm 40). cool story. and it got me thinking...
the speaker brought up the point that we often only look to God in our times of weakness. it is in those times that we actually let Him work and amazing things can happen. as paul says in 2nd Corinthians,
so, i will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me ... for whenever i am weak, then i am strong
this all got me thinking about a mutemath song called 'break the same' (i posted lyrics from this a few posts ago). what came to my mind from this song were the following lyrics,
its the sticks and stones that wear us down
that often save our lives
its all those things in life that hurt us, that eat away at us, that we cant stand in the moment, that are exactly what we need. its all those things that make life difficult that we simply must have. 'its the sticks and stones that wear us down' that make us look to Christ, and thus ultimately save our lives.
so many people ask God (often rather angrily), why do You allow pain and suffering? a part of the answer to that question is found here. we try and do everything by ourselves all the time. to borrow from c.s. lewis, we try and set up on our own as if we had created ourselves. we think we've got it all figured out and can be happy apart from God, but we can't. it is in those times when we just can't do it ourselves that we finally learn to give up and let God, the only one who can truly fulfill us, do it through us. it is this giving up and letting God come and work in us, that God wants to teach us through our rough times.
as only tears know how we find that we all break the same and that we all need to give up and let God work in order to save our lives.