Limitations are your Gateway to a Limitless God

It’s one of the most counter-intuitive truths of our faith – 

Your own limitations are the gateway to a limitless God.

My own energy, my fluctuating emotions, my need for sleep, my desire for quiet, they seem like brick walls that I slam into over and over – at least that’s how they feel. I’m so slow to learn that what feels like brick walls are actually God’s open doors. The hard wall I feel of my own limitations is actually just a gate, a gate to something much wider and bigger and powerful and even more beautiful than what I am trying to produce. It’s the gate between my limited ability and Christ’s unmeasurable strength and grace.

Have you hit the wall again? And do you want to feel for the latch on the gate?

It is simply this:

Your own need.

Do you feel weak? Tired? Unable? The deeper truth is that we are even weaker than we feel, more helpless than we can see, and this isn’t a liability; it’s a gift. God’s requirement for the enabling work of the Spirit in our lives and ministries is simply an awareness of our deep dependance on Him.

“On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink.” (John 7:37) Jesus is crying out an invitation, and you can cry out your response, “Yes, I am thirsty.” Don’t settle for turning to anything less than Jesus for strength. Why would you when He makes an offer like this?

“Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ Now he said this about the Spirit…” (John 7:38,39)

So we admit our need, cry out, and respond to who Jesus is and what He says in faith, and then this great promise comes next – rivers of living water. Like the always bubbling hot springs in the mountains around where I live, the grace and strength of God never stop flowing. That means that when I feel like I have nothing left to give, this is the best place to be. My cry puts the hand on the gate and faith opens it into the never-ending stream of something so much better than anything I have to offer.

This is why Paul could say that he could rejoice in his weakness. (2 Corinthians 12:9) And if we can rejoice in our weakness, couldn’t we conversely weep over our sense of ability? Or what have I robbed myself and those God has placed in my own life, by settling for serving in my own strength? That is a haunting question, but I’m so glad the river of living water is only as far away as a moment of belief, belief in Jesus’s words in John 15, “apart from me you can do nothing.”

The more I believe that in faith, the more I am driven to prayer. John Calvin made this connection when he said that prayer requires, “a sense of need that excludes all unreality.” No matter how much I have tarnished the past with my own sense of ability, today I can step away from unreality into truth, and here is hope for a ministry so much deeper and better than anything I can come up with on my own.

Taking It Further: Are you settling for serving in your own strength? What do you need to believe today to step into serving in Christ’s strength?