Words Of Encouragement To Start The Day (Tuesday 04/13/10)

Today’s Devotional Written By a Solider Waging War: Tracy Koweh

Give All or Nothing

John 16:33 (New Living Translation)

³³ I have told you all this so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.”

Today's message in the music comes Aretha Franklin's "Look into Your Heart". If you're like me you know this song from the movie Sparkle. The entire song is so meaningful that it will be the message for the next few days. Today's verse is: When I finally found there was nothing left. I do believe I found myself. And I want to give it to you baby. This song is the finale of the movie, and its so powerful because throughout the movie Sparkle doesn't realize who she is. She doesn't recognize her own talent and strength because she is living behind the shadow of her older sister. She goes through the motions of life, but she is really not living until she meets a man who sees everything that is inside of her, even though she still can't see it. He loves her with a determination to push her to her destiny.

Well, I've been privileged to experience this love in the physical and the spiritual. Yesterday was a very rough day for me. I had a day off to rest and regroup from all the party planning and craziness from the weekend I had gone through, but from the first twenty minutes of my day nothing went right. First Jai chose this one opportunity for me to sleep in to wake up early. Second, I came out of the shower to find peaches and juice all over my bedroom floor. When we get ready to head out for school, I can't find my keys. Then I find my keys to discover I have very little gas in the car. It just kept getting better and better. So then I have this amazing idea to go get my hair done and I hate it. I mean it looked like something Jaida could have done. So ninety minutes and $45 later I got in my car and lost it. I cried and cried some more, and I realized that it had to be something more; something I was missing.

Well, in the midst of my break down Shane was so calm and so loving. He just listened and said he loves me. We get off the phone and he prays. Then I get an "email' from heaven and Jesus asks me what's wrong. I honestly don't know and so I cry some more. By now I've texted my contact list and told everybody to leave me alone and let me be for the day. And then God spoke to me. He told me the problem was me. I was trying to take on too much by myself. I was giving God some of my issues but still trying to handle some things all on my own. So overestimating my own strength plus underestimating His lead to a feeling so powerful and overwhelming the smallest non-trivial things caused me to break down.

It was in me losing my strength, my ability, my control, that I found myself in Christ. I found that greater is He that is in me, than just me by myself in this world. In the song when she says "I want to give me to you baby", she is meaning all of her. And like single's side yesterday we have to get to a place where we give all of ourselves to the Father or the enemy will break us down with the little day to day things we are faced with. Today let us decide to either give it all to Him, or nothing at all. He is a full time God, not a part time worker on call.